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ENGLISH MEN OF LETTERS 
EDITED BT JOHN MORLET 

SYDNEY SMITH 



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LiSRARYof CONGRESS 
Two Copies Hdceivod 

JAN 24 1905 

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By the MACMILLAN COMPANY. 



Set up and electrotyped. Published January, 1905. 



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PREFACE 

In writing this Study of Sydney Smith, I have been 
working in a harvest-field where a succession of dili- 
gent gleaners had preceded me. 

As soon as Sydney Smith died, his widow began 
to accumulate material for her husband's biography. 
She did not live to see the work accomplished, but 
she enjoined in her will that some record of his life 
should be written. The duty was undertaken by his 
daughter, Saba Lady Holland, who in 1855 published 
A Memoir of the Reverend Sydney Smith. To this 
memoir was subjoined a volume of extracts from his 
letters, compiled by his friend and admirer, Mrs. 
Austin. 

For nearly thirty years Lady Holland's Memoir 
and Mrs. Austin's Selection of Letters together con- 
stituted the sole Biography of Sydney Smith, and 
they still remain of prime authority; but they are 
lamentably inaccurate in dates. 

Lord Houghton's slight but vivid monograph was 
published in 1873. In 1884 Mr. Stuart Eeid pro- 
duced A Sketch of the Life and Times of Sydney Smith, 
in which he supplemented the earlier narrative with 
some traditions derived from friends then living, and 
"painted the figure of Sydney Smith against the 
background of his times." In 1898 the late Sir Leslie 
Stephen contributed an article on Sydney Smith to 

V 



vi SYDNEY SMITH 

the Dictionary of National Biography ; but added little 
to what was already known. 

On these various writings I have perforce relied, for 
their respective authors seemed to have exhausted all 
available resources. Lord Carlisle has some of Sydney 
Smith's letters at Castle Howard, and Lord Ilchester 
has some at Holland House ; but both assure me 
that everything worth publishing has already been 
published. 

I have, however, been more fortunate in my appli- 
cation to my cousin, Mr. Rollo Russell, and to four of 
Sydney Smith's descendants — Mr. Sydney Holland, 
Mr. Holland-Hibbert of Munden, Miss Caroline Hol- 
land, and Mrs. Cropper of Ellergreen. To all these 
my thanks are due for interesting information, and 
access to valuable records. In common with all who 
use the Reading-Room of the British Museum, I am 
greatly indebted to the skill and courtesy of Mr. G. F. 
Barwick. 

So much for the biographical part of my work. In 
the critical part I have relied less on authority, and 
more on my own devotion to Sydney Smith's writings. 
That devotion dates from my schooldays at Harrow, 
and is due to the kindness of my father. He had 
known "dear old Sydney" well, and gave me the 
Collected Works, exhorting me to study them as 
models of forcible and pointed English. From that 
day to this, I have had no more favourite reading. 

G. W. E. R. 

November 12, 1904. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER I 

PAGE 

Education — Salisbury Plain — Edinburgh. . . 1 

CHAPTER n 

"The Edinburgh Review" — London — " Moral Phi- 
losophy " 24 

CHAPTER in 
"Peter Plymley" 45 

CHAPTER IV 
FosTON — "Persecuting Bishops" — Bench and Bar . 77 

CHAPTER V 

" Catholic Emancipation" — Bristol — Combe Flore y 

— Reform — Pro3iotion 106 

CHAPTER VI 

St. Paul's — The Parallelogram — "Archdeacon 

Singleton" — Collected Works .... 147 

CHAPTER VII 

Characteristics — Humour — Politics — Culture — 

Theories of Life — Religion 193 

Appendices 227 

Index 235 

vii 



SYDNEY SMITH 

CHAPTER I 

EDUCATION — SALISBURY PLAIN — EDINBURGH 

A WORTHY tradesman, who had accumulated a large 
fortune, married a lady of gentle birth and manners. 
In later years one of his daughters said to a friend of 
the family, ^'I dare say you notice a great difference 
between papa's behaviour and mamma's. It is easily 
accounted for. Papa, immensely to his credit, raised 
himself to his present position from the shop; but 
mamma was extremely well born. She was a Miss 
Smith — one of the old Smiths, of Essex^ 

It might appear that Sydney Smith was a growth 
of the same majestic but mysterious tree, for he was 
born at Woodford; but further research traces his 
ancestry to Devonshire. " We are all one family," he 
used to say, " all the Smiths who dwell on the face of 
the earth. You may try to disguise it in any way you 
like — Smyth, or Smythe, or Smijth ^ — but you always 
get back to Smith after all — the most numerous and 
most respectable family in England." When a com- 
piler of pedigrees asked permission to insert Sydney's 

1 For this remarkable variant, see Burke's Peerage, Boivyer- 
Smijth, Bart. 

B 1 



2 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. 

arms in a County History, he replied, "I regret, sir, 
not to be able to contribute to so valuable a work ; 
but the Smiths never had any arms. They invariably 
sealed their letters with their thumbs." In later life 
he adopted the excellent and characteristic motto — 
Fabermeoefortunce; and, to some impertinent questions 
about his grandfather, he replied with becoming gravity 
— " He disappeared about the time of the assizes, and 
we asked no questions." 

As a matter of fact, this maligned progenitor came 
to London from Devonshire, established a business in 
Eastcheap, and left it to his two sons, Robert and 
James. Eobert Smith ^ made over his share to his 
brother, and went forth to see the world. This 
object he pursued, amid great vicissitudes of fortune 
and environment, till in old age he settled down at 
Bishop's Lydeard, in Somerset. He married Maria 
Olier, a pretty girl of French descent, and by her 
had five children : Robert Percy — better known as 
"Bobus" — born in 1770; Sydney in 1771; Cecil in 
1772; Courtenay in 1773; and Maria in 1774. 

Sydney Smith was born on the 3rd of June; and 
was baptized on the 1st of July in the parish church 
of Woodford. His infancy was passed at South 
Stoneham, near Southampton. At the age of six he 
was sent to a private school at Southampton, and 
on the 19th of July 1782 was elected a Scholar of 
Winchester College. He stayed at Winchester for six 
years, and worked his way to the top place in the 
school, being "Prefect of Hall" when he left in 1788. 
Beyond these facts, Winchester seems to retain no 

1 (173^1827.) 



I.] EDUCATION 3 

impressions of her brilliant son, in this respect con- 
trasting strangely with other Public Schools. West- 
minster knows all about Cowper — and a sorry tale it is. 
Canning left an ineffaceable mark on Eton. Harrow 
abounds in traditions, oral and written, of Sheridan 
and Byron, Peel and Palmerston. But Winchester is 
silent about Sydney Smith. 

Sydney, however, was not silent about Winchester. 
In one of the liveliest passages of his controversial 
writings, he said : — 

"I was at school and college with the Archbishop of 
Canterbury : ^ fifty-three years ago he knocked me down 
with the chess-board for checkmating him — and now he is 
attempting to take away my patronage. I believe these are 
the only two acts of violence he ever committed in his 
life." 



Now Howley was a prefect when Sydney was a junior, 
and this game of chess must have been (as a living 
Wykehamist has pointed out to me) " a command per- 
formance. '^ The big boy liked chess, so the little 
boy had to play it : the big boy disliked being check- 
mated, so the little boy was knocked down. This 
and similar experiences probably coloured Sydney's 
mind when he wrote in 1810: — 

" At a Public School (for such is the system established by 
immemorial custom) every boy is alternately tyrant and slave. 
The power which the elder part of these communities exercises 
over the younger is exceedingly great ; very difficult to be 
controlled ; and accompanied, not unfrequently, with cruelty 
and caprice. It is the common law of these places, that the 
younger should be implicitly obedient to the elder boys ; and 

1 William Howley (1766-1848). 



4 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. 

this obedience resembles more the submission of a slave to 
his master, or of a sailor to his captain, than the common 
and natural deference which would always be shown by one 
boy to another a few years older than himself. Now, this 
system we cannot help considering as an evil, because it 
inflicts upon boys, for two or three years of their lives, many 
painful hardships, and much unpleasant servitude. These 
sufferings might perhaps be of some use in military schools; 
but to give to a boy the habit of enduring privations to 
"which he will never again be called upon to submit — to inure 
him to pains which he will never again feel — and to subject 
him to the privation of comforts, with which he will always 
in future abound — is surely not a very useful and valuable 
severity in education. It is not the life in miniature which 
he is to lead hereafter, nor does it bear any relation to it ; 
he will never again be subjected to so m^uch insolence and 
caprice ; nor ever, in all human probability, called upon to 
make so many sacrifices. The servile obedience which it 
teaches might be useful to a menial domestic ; or the habit 
of enterprise which it encourages prove of importance to a 
military partisan ; but we cannot see what bearing it has upon 
the calm, regular, civil life, which the sons of gentlemen, 
destined to opulent idleness, or to any of the more learned 
professions, are destined to lead. Such a system makes many 
boys very miserable ; and produces those bad effects upon the 
temper and disposition which boyish suffering always does 
produce. But what good it does, we are much at a loss to 
conceive. Reasonable obedience is extremely useful in forming 
the disposition. Submission to tyranny lays the foundation of 
hatred, suspicion, cunning, and a variety of odious passions. . . . 
" The wretchedness of school tyranny is trifling enough to a 
man who only contemplates it, in ease of body and tranquillity 
of mind, through the medium of twenty intervening years ; 
but it is quite as real, and quite as acute, while it lasts, as 
any of the sufferings of mature life : and the utility of these 
sufferings, or the price paid in compensation for them, should 
be clearly made out to a conscientious parent before he con- 
sents to expose his children to them." 



I.] EDUCATION 5 

Lady Holland tells us that in old age her father 
" used to shudder at the recollections of Winchester," 
and represented the system prevailing there in his 
youth as composed of ^' abuse, neglect, and vice." 
And, speaking of the experience of lower boys at 
Public Schools in general, he described it as "an 
intense system of tyranny, of which the English are 
very fond, and think it fits a boy for the world ; but 
the world, bad as it is, has nothing half so bado" 

"A man gets well pummelled at a Public School; is 
subject to every misery and every indignity which seventeen 
years of age can inflict upon nine and ten ; has his eye nearly 
knocked out, and his clothes stolen and cut to pieces ; and 
twenty years afterwards, when he is a chrysalis, and has 
forgotten the miseries of his grub state, is determined to act 
a manly part in life, and says, ' I passed through all that 
myself, and I am determined my son shall pass through it as 
I have done ' ; and away goes his bleating progeny to the 
tyranny and servitude of the Long Chamber or the Large 
Dormitory. It would surely be much more rational to say, 
* Because I have passed through it, I am determined my son 
shall not pass through it. Because I was kicked for nothing, 
and cuffed for nothing, and fagged for everything, I will 
spare all these miseries to my child.' " 

And, while he thus condemned the discipline under 
which he had been reared, he had no better opinion 
of the instruction. Not that he was an opponent 
of classical education: on the contrary, he had a 
genuine and reasoned admiration for " the two ancient 
languages." He held that, compared to them, " merely 
as vehicles of thought and passion, all modern lan- 
guages are dull, ill-contrived, and barbarous." He 
thought that even the most accomplished of modern 
writers might still be glad to " borrow descriptive power 



6 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. 

from Tacitus ; dignified perspicuity from Livy ; sim- 
plicity from Caesar ; and from Homer some portion of 
that light and heat which, dispersed into ten thousand 
channels, has filled the world with bright images and 
illustrious thoughts. Let the cultivator of modern 
literature addict himself to the purest models of taste 
which France, Italy, and England could supply — he 
might still learn from Virgil to be majestic, and from 
Tibullus to be tender ; he might not yet look upon the 
face of nature as Theocritus saw it ; nor might he reach 
those springs of pathos with which Euripides softened 
the hearts of his audience." 

This sound appreciation of what was best in classical 
literature was accompanied in Sydney Smith by the 
most outspoken contempt for the way in which Greek 
and Latin are taught in Public Schools. He thought 
that schoolmasters encouraged their pupils to "love 
the instrument better than the end — not the luxury 
which the difficulty encloses, but the difficulty — not 
the filbert, but the shell — not what may be read in 
Greek, but Greek itself." 

" We think that, in order to secure an attention to Homer 
and Virgil, we must catch up every man, whether he is to be 
a clergyman or a duke, begin with him at six years of age, 
and never quit him till he is twenty ; making him conjugate 
and decline for life and death ; and so teaching him to 
estimate his progress in real wisdom as he can scan the 
verses of the Greek Tragedians." 

He desired that boys should obtain a quick and easy 
mastery over the authors whom they had to read, and 
on this account he urged that they should be taught by 
the use of literal and interlinear translations ; but " a 
literal translation, or any translation, of a school-book 



I.] EDUCATION 7 

is a contraband article in English schools, which a 
schoolmaster would instantly seize, as a custom-house 
officer would seize a barrel of gin." 

Grammar, gerund-grinding, the tyranny of the 
Lexicon and the Dictionary, had got the schoolboys of 
England in their grasp, and the boy " was suffocated 
with the nonsense of grammarians, overwhelmed with 
every species of difficulty disproportionate to his 
age, and driven by despair to pegtop or marbles " ; 
while the British Parent stood and spoke thus with 
himself: — 

" Have I read through LiUy ? Have I learnt by heart that 
most atrocious monument of absurdity, the Westminster 
Grammar ? Have I been whipt for the substantives ? whipt 
for the verbs? and whipt for and with the interjections? 
Have I picked the sense slowly, and word by word, out of 
Hederich ? and shall my son be exempt from all this misery ? 
. . . Ay, ay, it 's all mighty well ; but I went through this 
myself, and I am determined my children shall do the same." 

Another grotesque abuse with regard to which 
Sydney Smith was a reformer fifty years before his 
time was compulsory versification. — 

" There are few boys who remain to the age of eighteen or 
nineteen at a Public School without making above ten 
thousand Latin verses — a greater number than is contained 
in the vEneid ; and, after he has made this quantity of verses 
in a dead language, unless the poet should happen to be a 
very weak man indeed, he never makes another as long as 
he lives." ^ 

" The English clergy, in whose hands education entirely 

1 In 1819 Sydney Smith violated his own canon, thus : "But, 
after all, I believe we shall all go — 

ad veteris Xicolai tristia regna, 
Pitt ubi combustum Dundasque videhimus omnes." 



8 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. 

rests, bring up the first young men of the country as if they 
were all to keep grammar-schools in little country-towns; 
and a nobleman, upon whose knowledge and liberality the 
honour and welfare of his country may depend, is diligently 
worried, for half his life, with the small pedantry of longs 
and shorts." 

The same process is applied at the other end of the 
social scale. The baker's son, young Crumpet, is sent 
to a grammar-school, "takes to his books, spends the 
best years of his life, as all eminent Englishmen do, in 
making Latin verses, learns that the Crum in Crumpet 
is long and the jpet short, goes to the University, gets a 
prize for an essay on the Dispersion of the Jews, takes 
Orders, becomes a Bishop's chaplain, has a young 
nobleman for his pupil, publishes a useless classic and a 
Serious Call to the Unconverted, and then goes through 
the Elysian transitions of Prebendary, Dean, Prelate, 
and the long train of purple, profit, and power." 

In this vivacious passage, Sydney Smith caricatures 
his own career ; which, though it neither began in a 
baker's shop nor ended in an episcopal palace, followed 
pretty closely the line of development here indicated. 
At Winchester he "took to his books" with such 
goodwill that, in spite of all hindrances, he became an 
excellent scholar, and laid the strong foundations for a 
wide and generous culture. His family indeed propa- 
gated some pleasing traditions about his schooldays — 
one of a benevolent stranger who found him reading 
Virgil when other boys were playing cricket, patted his 
head, and foretold his future greatness ; another of a 
round-robin from his schoolfellows, declining to compete 
against him for prizes, "because he always gained 
them." But this is not history. 



I.] EDUCATION 9 

Eroin Wincliester Sydney Smith passed in natural 
course to the other of " the two colleges of St. Mary 
AVinton " ; and, in the interval between Winchester 
and Oxford, his father sent him for six months to 
Normandy, with a view to improving his French. 
Eevolution was in the air, and it was thought a 
salutary precaution that he should join one of the 
Jacobin clubs in the town where he boarded, and he 
was duly entered as '•' Le Citoyen Smit, Membre Affilie 
au Club des Jacobins de jMont Villiers." 

But he was soon recalled to more tranquil scenes. 
He was elected Scholar of New College, Oxford, 
on the 5th of January 1789, and at the end of 
his second year he exchanged his Scholarship for a 
Fellowship. From that time on he never cost his 
father a farthing, and he paid a considerable debt for 
his younger brother Courtenay, though, as he justly 
remarks, " a hundred pounds a year was very difficult 
to spread over the wants of a College life." Ten years 
later he wrote — "I got in debt by buying books. I 
never borrowed a farthing of anybody, and never re- 
ceived much ; and have lived in poverty and economy 
all my life." 

His career at Oxford is buried in even deeper 
obscurity than his schooltime at Winchester. This is 
no doubt to be explained, on the intellectual side, by 
the fact that members of New College were at that 
time exempt from public examination; and, on the 
social side, by the straitened circumstances which 
prevented him from showing hospitality, and the pride 
which made him unwilling to accept what he could 
not return. We are left to gather his feelings about 
Oxford and the system pursued there, from casual 



10 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. 

references in his critical writings ; and these are un- 
complimentary enough. When he wishes to stigmatize 
a proposition as enormously and preposterously absurd, 
he says that there is " no authority on earth (always 
excepting the Dean of Christ Church), which could 
make it credible to me.'' When stirred to the liveliest 
indignation by the iniquities which a Tory Govern- 
ment is practising in Ireland, he exclaims — "A Senior 
Proctor of the University of Oxford, the Head of a 
House, or the examining chaplain to a Bishop, may 
believe these things can last; but every man of the 
world, whose understanding has been exercised in the 
business of life, must see (and see with a breaking 
heart) that they will soon come to a fearful termina- 
tion." He praised a comparison of the Universities to 
"enormous hulks confined with mooring-chains, every- 
thing flowing and progressing around them," while 
they themselves stood still. 

When pleading for a wider and more reasonable 
course of studies at Oxford, he says : — 

" A gemiine Oxford tutor would shudder to hear his young 
men disi3uting upon moral and political truth, forming and 
putting down theories, and indulging in all the boldness of 
youthful discussion. He would augur nothing from it but 
impiety to God and treason to Kings." 

Protesting against the undue predominance of 
classical studies in the Universities, as at the Public 
Schools, he says : — 

" Classical literature is the great object at Oxford. Many 
minds so employed have produced many works, and much 
fame in that department : but if all liberal arts and sciences 
useful to human life had been taught there ; if some had 



I.] EDUCATION 11 

dedicated themselves to chemistry, some to mathematics, some 
to experimental philosophy; and if every attainment had 
been honoured in the mixt ratio of its difficulty and utility ; 
the system of such an University would have been much more 
valuable, but the splendour of its name something less." 

The hopelessness of any attempt to reform the 
curriculum of Oxford by opening the door to Political 
Economy is stated v^^ith cbaracteristic vigour. — 

" When an University has been doing useless things for a 
long time, it appears at first degrading to them to be useful. 
A set of lectures upon Political Economy would be discouraged 
in Oxford, possibly despised, probably not permitted. To 
discuss the Enclosure of Commons, and to dwell upon imports 
and exports — to come so near to common life, would seem to 
be undignified and contemptible. In the same manner, the 
Parr or the Bentley of his day would be scandalized to be put 
on a level with the discoverer of a neutral salt; and yet what 
other measure is there of dignity in intellectual labour, but 
usefulness and difficulty ? And what ought the term Univer- 
sity to mean, but a place where every science is taught which 
is liberal, and at the same time useful to mankind ? Nothing 
would so much tend to bring classical literature within 
proper bounds as a steady and invariable appeal to these tests 
in our appreciation of all human knowledge. The puffed-up 
pedant would collapse into his proper size, and the maker of 
verses and the rememberer of words would soon assume that 
station which is the lot of those who go up unbidden to the 
upper places of the feast." 

In 1810 he wrote, with reference to the newly- 
invented Examination for Honours at Oxford : — 

" If Oxford is become at last sensible of the miserable state 
to which it w^as reduced, as everybody else was out of Oxford, 
and if it is making serious efforts to recover from the degra- 
dation into which it was plunged a few years past, the good 
wishes of every respectable man must go with it." 



12 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. 

And again : — 

" On the new plan of Oxford education we shall offer no 
remarks. It has many defects ; but it is very honourable to 
the University to have made such an experiment. The 
improvement upon the old plan is certainly very great ; and 
we most sincerely and honestly wish to it every species of 
success." 

His opinions on the subject of the Universities did 
not mellow with age. As late as 1831 he wrote of a 
friend who had just sent his son to Cambridge : — 

" He has put him there to spend his money, to lose what 
good qualities he has, and to gain nothing useful in return. 
If men had made no more progress in the common arts of 
life than they have in education, we should at this moment 
be dividing our food with our fingers, and drinking out of the 
palms of our hands." 

It was just as bad when a lady sent her son to his 
own University. — 

" I feel for her about her son at Oxford, knowing, as I do, 
that the only consequences of a University education are the 
growth of vice and the waste of money." 

In 1792 Sydney Smith took his degree/ and now 
the question of a profession had to be faced and 
decided. It was necessary that he should begin to 
make money at once, for the pecuniary resources of 
the family, narrow at the best, were now severely 
taxed by his mother's failing health and by the cost of 
starting his brothers in the world. At Oxford, he had 
dabbled in medicine and anatomy, and had attended 
the lectures of Dr., afterwards Sir Christopher, Pegge,^ 
who recommended him to become a doctor. His father 

1 He became M.A. in 1796. 

2 (1765-1822.) Lees' Reader in Anatomy 1790, Regius Professor 
of Medicine 1801. 



I.J SALISBURY PLAIN 13 

wished to send liirn as a super-cargo to China ! His 
own strong preference was for the Bar, but his father, 
who had already brought up one son to that profession 
and found it more expensive than profitable, looked 
very unfavourably on the design ; and under paternal 
pressure the wittiest Englishman of his generation 
determined to seek Holy Orders, or, to use his own 
old-fashioned phrase, to "enter the Church." He 
assumed the sacred character without enthusiasm, and 
looked back on its adoption with regret. " The law," 
he said in after life, " is decidedly the best profession 
for a young man if he has anything in him. In the 
Church a man is thrown into life with his hands tied, 
and bid to swim ; he does well if he keeps his head 
above water." 

Under these rather dismal auspices, Sydney Smith 
was ordained Deacon in 1794. He might, one would 
suppose, have been ordained on his Eellowship, and 
have continued to reside in College with a view to 
obtaining a Lectureship or some other office of profit. 
Perhaps he found the mental atmosphere of Oxford 
insalubrious. Perhaps he was unpopular in College. 
Perhaps his political opinions were already too liberal 
for the place. Certain it is that his visit to France, 
in the earlier stages of the Eevolution, had led him to 
extol the French for teaching mankind "the use of their 
power, their reason, and their rights." Whatever was 
the cause, he turned his back on Oxford, and, as soon 
as he was ordained, became Curate of JSTetheravon, a 
village near Amesbury.^ As he himself said, " the 

1 It is curious that the date and place of Sydney Smith's 
ordination as Deacon cannot be traced. He would naturally 
have been ordained at Salisbury by John Douglas, Bishop of 



14 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. 

name of Curate had lost its legal meaning, and, instead 
of denoting the incumbent of a living, came to signify 
the deputy of an absentee." He had sole charge of the 
parish of Netheravon, and was also expected to perform 
one service every Sunday at the adjoining village of 
Fittleton. "Nothing," wrote the new-fledged curate, 
" can equal the profound, the immeasurable, the awful 
dulness of this place, in the which I lie, dead and buried, 
in hope of a joyful resurrection in 1796." Indeed, it 
is not easy to conceive a more dismal situation for a 
young, ardent, and active man, fresh from Oxford, full of 
intellectual ambition, and not very keenly alive to the 
spiritual opportunities of his calling. The village, a kind 
of oasis in the desert of Salisbury Plain, was not 
touched by any of the coaching-roads. The only method 
of communication with the outside world was by the 
market-cart which brought the necessaries of life 
from Salisbury once a week. The vicar was non- 
resident ; and the squire, Mr. Hicks-Beach, was only 
an occasional visitor, for his principal residence was 
fifty miles off, at William strip, near Fairford. (He 
had acquired Netheravon by his marriage with Miss 
Beach.) The church was empty, and the curate in 
charge likened his preaching to the voice of one 
crying in the wilderness. The condition of the village 

Sarum ; but there is a gap in that prelate's Register of Ordina- 
tions between 1791 and 1796. He may have been ordained on 
Letters Dimissory in some other diocese. He was raised to the 
Priesthood in Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford, on the 22nd of 
May 1796 by Edward Smallwell, Bishop of Oxford ; being 
described as Fellow of New College, and B.A. 

For the foregoing facts I am indebted to the courtesy of 
Mr, A. R. Maiden, Registrar of the Diocese of Salisbury, and 
Mr. J. A. Davenport, Registrar of the Diocese of Oxford. 



I.] SALISBURY PLAIN 15 

may best be judged from a report made to Mr. Hicks- 
Beach by his steward in 1793. Nearly every one was 
dependent on parochial relief. Not a man earned ten 
shillings a week. A man with a wife and four children 
worked for six shillings a week. A girl earned, by 
spinning, four shillings a month. Idleness, disease, 
and immorality were rife ; and, as an incentive to 
profitable industry, a young farmer beat a sickly 
labourer within an inch of his life. 

Mrs. Hicks-Beach referred this uncomfortable report 
on the condition of her property to the newly-installed 
curate, requesting his opinion on the cases specified. 
The curate replied with characteristic vigour. One 
family owed its wretched condition to mismanagement 
and extravagance; another to "ignorance bordering 
on brutality " ; another to " Irish extraction, numbers, 
disease, and habits of idleness." One family was 
composed of " weak, witless people, totally wretched, 
without sense to extricate them from their wretched- 
ness " ; a second was " perfectly wretched and helpless " ; 
and a third was " aliment for Newgate, food for the 
halter — a ragged, wretched, savage, stubborn race." ^ 

The squire and Mrs. Hicks-Beach, who seem to have 
been thoroughly high-principled and intelligent people, 
were much concerned to find the curate corroborating 
and even expanding the evil reports of the steward. 
They immediately began considering remedies, and 
decided that their first reform should be to establish 
a Sunday-school. The institution so named bore little 
resemblance to the Sunday-schools of the present day, 
but followed a plan which Eobert Kaikes ^ and Mrs. 

1 Quoted by Mr. Stuart Reid. 

2 (1735-1811.) 



16 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. 

Hannah More^ had originated, and which Bishop 
Shute Barrington^ (who was translated to Durham 
in 1791) had strongly urged on the Diocese of 
Sarum.^ Boys and girls were taught together. The 
master and mistress were paid the modest salary of 
two shillings a Sunday. The children were taught 
spelling and reading, and, as soon as they had mastered 
those arts, were made to read the Bible, the Prayer 
Book, and Mrs. More's tracts. The children attended 
church, sitting together in a big pew, and, in hot 
weather, had their lessons in the church, before and 
after the service. As soon as the Sunday-school had 
proved itself popular and successful, an Industrial 
School was arranged for three nights in the week, so 
that the girls of the village might be taught domestic 
arts. Both institutions prospered, and ninety years later 
Mr. Stuart Eeid, visiting the cottages of Netheravon 
in order to collect material for his book, caught the 
lingering tradition that Sydney Smith " was fond of 
children and young people, and took pains to teach 
them." 

This tradition bears out what Sydney Smith said in 
his Farewell Sermon to the people of Netheravon. 
Preaching from Proverbs iv. 13, " Take fast hold of 
instruction," he said : — 

1 (1745-1833.) 2 (1734-1826.) 

8 " At the commencement of the nineteenth century, the 
Sunday-school had hecome a part of the regular organization 
of almost every well-worked parish. It was then a far more 
serious affair than it is now, for, where there was no week-day 
school, it supplied secular as well as religious instruction to 
the children. In fact, the Sunday-school took up a consider- 
able part of the day."— J. H. Overton, The English Church in 
the Nineteenth Century. 



I.] EDINBURGH 17 

" The Sunday-school which, with some trouble and expense, 
has been brought to the state in which you see it, will afford 
to the poorest people an opportunity of giving to their children 
some share of education, and 1 will not suppose that anybody 
can be so indolent, and so unprincipled, as not to exact from 
their children a regular attendance upon it. I sincerely exhort 
you, and beg of you now, for the last time, that after this 
institution has been got into some kind of order, you will not 
suffer it to fall to ruin by your own negligence. I have lived 
among your children, and have taught them myself, and have 
seen them improve, and I know it will make them better and 
happier men." 

And now a change was at hand. The curate of 
Netheravon had never intended to stay there longer 
than he was obliged, and the " happy resurrection " for 
which he had hoped came in an unexpected fashion. 
Here is his own account of his translation, written 
in 1839 : — 

" The squire of the parish took a fancy to me, and requested 
me to go with his son to reside at the University of Weimar ; 
before we could get there, Germany became the seat of war, 
and in stress of politics we put into Edinburgh, where I 
remained five years. The principles of the French Revolution 
were then fully afloat, and it is impossible to conceive a more 
violent and agitated state of society." 

Sydney Smith and his pupil, Michael Beach,^ arrived 
at Edinburgh in June 1798. They lodged successively 
at 38 South Hanover Street, 19 Ann Street, and 
46 George Street. The University of Edinburgh was 
then in its days of glory. Dugald Stewart was Pro- 
fessor of Moral Philosophy ; John Playf air, of Mathe- 
matics; John Hill, of Humanity. The teaching was 
at once interesting and systematic, the intellectual 

1 Grandfather of Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, M.P. 
c 



18 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. 

atmosphere liberal and enterprising. English parents 
who cared seriously for mental and moral freedom, 
such as the Duke of Somerset, the Duke of Bedford, 
and Lord Lansdowne, sent their sons to Edinburgh 
instead of Oxford or Cambridge. The University was 
in close relations with the Bar, then adorned by the 
great names of Erancis Jeffrey, Erancis Horner, Henry 
Brougham, and Walter Scott. While Michael Beach 
was duly attending the professorial lectures, his tutor 
was not idle. Erom Dugald Stewart, and Thomas 
Brown, he acquired the elements of Moral Philosophy. 
He gratified a lifelong fancy by attending the Clinical 
Lectures given by Dr. Gregory^ in the hospitals of 
Edinburgh, and studied Chemistry under Dr. Black.^ 
He amused himself with chemical experiments. — 

" I mix'd 4 of Holland gin with 8 of olive oil, and stirr'd 
them well together. I then added 4 of nitric acid. A violent 
ebullition ensued. Nitrous oether, as I suppos'd, M^as gener- 
ated, and in about four hours the oil became perfectly con- 
crete, white and hard as tallow." 

To these scientific pastimes were soon added some 
more professional activities. The Episcopalians of 
Edinburgh at this time worshipped in Charlotte Chapel, 
Eose Street, which was sold in 1818 to the Baj)tists. 
The incumbent was the Eev. Archibald Alison,^ who 
wrote a treatise on "Taste" and ministered in one 
of the ugliest buildings in the world. The arrival in 
Edinburgh of a clever young man in English Orders 
was an opportunity not to be neglected, and Sydney 

1 James Gregory (1753-1821), Professor of Medicine. 

2 Joseph Black (1728-1799), Professor of Chemistry. 
8 (1757-1839.) 



I.] EDINBURGH 19 

Smith was often invited to preach in Charlotte Chapel. 
Writing to Mr. Hicks-Beach, he says : — 

" I have the pleasure of seeing my audience nod approba- 
tion while they sleep." 

And again : — 

" The people of Edinburgh gape at my sermons. In the 
middle of an exquisite address to Virtue, beginning ' 
Virtue ! ' I saw a rascal gaping as if his jaws were torn 
asunder." 

But this, though perhaps it may have perplexed the 
worthy squire to whom it was addressed, is mere self- 
banter. Sydney's preaching attracted some of the 
keenest minds in Edinburgh. It was fresh, practical, 
pungent ; and, though rich in a vigorous and resound- 
ing eloquence, was poles asunder from the rhetoric of 
which " Virtue ! " is a typical instance. 

So popular were these sermons at Charlotte Chapel 
that in 1800 the preacher ventured to publish a small 
volume of them, which was soon followed by a second 
and enlarged edition. This book of sermons is dedi- 
cated to Lord Webb Seymour^ — "because I know 
no man who, in spite of the disadvantages of high 
birth, lives to more, honourable and commendable 
purposes than yourself.'^ 

The preface to the book is a vigorous plea for greater 
animation in preaching, a wider variety of topics, and 
a more direct bearing on practical life, than were then 
usual in the pulpits of the Church of England. 

" Is it wonder," he asks, " that every semi-delirious sectary, 
who pours forth his animated nonsense with the genuine look 

1 (1777-1819.) Son of the 10th Duke of Somerset. 



20 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. 

and voice of passion, should gesticulate away the congregation 
of the most profound and learned divine of the Established 
Church, and in two Sundays preach him bare to the very 
sexton? Why are we natural everywhere but in the pulpit? 
No man expresses warm and animated feelings anywhere else, 
with his mouth alone, but with his whole body ; he articulates 
with every limb, and talks from head to foot with a thousand 
voices. Why this holoplexia on sacred occasions alone ? Why 
call in the aid of paralysis to piety? Is it a rule of oratory to 
balance the style against the subject, and to handle the most 
sublime truths in the dullest language and the driest manner? 
Is sin to be taken from men, as Eve was from Adam, by 
casting them into a deep slumber ? Or from what possible 
perversion of common sense are we to look like field-preachers 
in Zembla, holy lumps of ice, numbed into quiescence and 
stagnation and mumbling?" 

The subjects with which these sermons deal are 
practical in the highest degree, such as "The Love 
of Country," " The Poor Magdalen," " The Causes of 
Eepublican Opinions," " The Effect of Christianity on 
Manners," and "The Treatment of Servants." One 
or two short samples of his thought and style will 
not be out of place. 

This is from his sermon on the Magdalen : — 

" The best mediation with God Almighty the Father, and 
His Son of Mercy and Love, is the prayer of a human being 
whom you have saved from perdition." 

This is from the sermon on " Christianity and 
Manners " : — 

" If ye would that men should love you, love ye also them, 
not with gentleness of face alone, or the shallow mockery of 
smiles, but in singleness of heart, in forbearance, judging 
mercifully, entering into the mind of thy brother, to spare him 
pain, to prevent his wrath, to be unto him an eternal fountain 



I.] EDINBURGH 21 

of peace. These are the fruits of the Spirit, and this the 
soul that emanates from our sacred religion. If ye bear these 
fruits now in the time of this life, if ye write these laws on 
the tablets of your hearts so as ye not only say but do them, 
then indeed are ye the true servants of Jesus and the children 
of His redemption. For you He came down from Heaven ; 
for you He was scorned and hated upon earth; for you 
mangled on the Cross ; and at the last day, wdien the trumpet 
shall sound, and the earth melt, and the heavens groan and 
die, ye shall spring up from the dust of the grave, the ever- 
living spirits of God." 

All tlie sermons breathe the same fiery indignation 
against cruelty and tyranny, the same quick sympathy 
with poverty, suffering, and debasement; and, here 
and there, especially in the occasional references to 
France and Switzerland, they show pretty clearly the 
preacher's political bias. In his own phrase, he " loved 
truth better than he loved Dundas,^ at that time the 
tyrant of Scotland " ; and it would have been a miracle 
if his outspokenness had passed without remonstrance 
from the authoritative and privileged classes. But the 
spirited preface to the second edition shows that he 
had. already learned to hold his own, unshaken and 
unterrified, in what he believed to be a righteous 
cause : — 

" As long as God gives me life and strength I will never 
cease to attack, in the way of my profession and to the best 
of my abilities, any system of principles injurious to the 
public happiness, whether they be sanctioned by the voice of 
the many, or whether they be not ; and may the same God 
take that unworthy life away, w^henever I shrink from the 
contempt and misrepresentation to which my duty shall call 
me to submit." 

1 Henry Dundas (1742-1811), Lord Advocate, created Viscount 
Melville in 1802. 



22 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. 

The year 1800 was marked, for Sydney Smith, by 
an event even more momentous than the publication 
of his first book. It was the year of his marriage. 
His sister Maria had a friend and schoolfellow called 
Catharine Amelia Pybus. He had known her as a 
child ; and while still quite young had become engaged 
to marry her, whenever circumstances should make 
it possible. The young lady's father was John Pybus, 
who had gone to India in the service of the Company, 
attained official distinction and made money. Eeturn- 
ing to England, he settled at Cheam in Surrey, where 
he died in 1789. In 1800 his daughter Catharine was 
twenty-two years old. Her brother, a Tory Member 
of Parliament and a placeman under Pitt, strongly 
objected to an alliance with a penniless and unknown 
clergyman of Liberal principles ; but Miss Pybus hap- 
pily knew her own mind, and she was married to 
Sydney Smith in the parish church of Cheam on the 
2nd of July 1800. The bride had a small fortune of 
her own, and this was just as well, for her husband's 
total wealth consisted of " six small silver teaspoons," 
which he flung into her lap, saying, " There, Kate, you 
lucky girl, I give you all my fortune ! " 

In the autumn of 1800, Mr. and Mrs. Sydney 
Smith, established themselves at No. 46 George Street, 
Edinburgh. Mrs. Smith sold her pearl necklace for 
£500, and bought plate and linen with the proceeds. 
Michael Beach had now quitted Edinburgh for Oxford, 
but his younger brother William took his place in the 
Smiths' house, and was joined by the eldest son of 
Mr. Gordon of Ellon. Lady Holland states that with 
each of these young gentlemen her father received 
£400 a year J and Mr. Hicks-Beach, grateful for his 



I.] EDINBURGH 23 

good influence on Michael, made a considerable addi- 
tion to the covenanted payment. 

In 1802 the Smiths' eldest child was born and was 
christened Saba. The name was taken out of the 
Psalms for the Fourteenth Day of the Month, and was 
bestowed on her in obedience to her father's con- 
viction that, where parents were constrained to give 
their child so indistinctive a surname as Smith, they 
ought to counterbalance it with a Christian name 
more original and vivacious. Saba Smith became 
the wife of the eminent physician. Sir Henry Holland, 
and died in 1866. The other children were — a boy, 
who was born and died in 1803; Douglas, born in 
1805, died in 1829 ; Emily, wife of Nathaniel Hibbert, 
born in 1807, died in 1874 ; Wyndham, born in 1813, 
died in 1871. 



CHAPTER II 

TEE EDINBURGH REVIEW LONDON *^ MORAL 

PHILOSOPHY " — PREFERMENT 

We now approach what was perliaps the most impor- 
tant event in Sydney Smith's life, and this was the 
foundation of the Edinburgh Review. Writing in 
1839, and looking back upon the struggles of his early 
manhood, he thus described the circumstances in which 
the Eeview originated : — 

" Among the first persons with whom I became acquainted 
[ill Edinburgh] were Lord Jeffrey, Lord Murray (late Lord 
Advocate for Scotland), and Lord Brougham; all of them 
maintaining opinions upon political subjects a little too 
liberal for the dynasty of Dundas, then exercising supreme 
power over the northern division of the Island. 

*' One day we happened to meet in the eighth or ninth 
story or flat in Buccleugh Place, the elevated residence of the 
then Mr. Jeffrey. I proposed that we should set up a Re- 
view ; this was acceded to with acclamation. I was appointed 
Editor, and remained long enough in Edinburgh to edit the 
first number of the Edinburgh Review. The motto I pro- 
posed for the Review was — 

' Tenui musam meditamur avena.'' 
' We cultivate literature on a little oatmeal.' 

But this was too near the truth to be admitted, and so we 
took our present grave motto from Publius Syrus, of whom 
none of us had, I am sure, ever read a single line ; and so 
began what has since turned out to be a very important 

24 



CHAP. II.] THE EDINBURGH BEVIEW 25 

and able journal. When I left Edinburgh, it fell into the 
stronger hands of Lord Jeffrey and Lord Brougham, and 
reached the highest point of popularity and success. 

" To appreciate the value of the Edinburgh Review, the 
state of England at the period when that journal began should 
be had in remembrance. The Catholics were not emancipated. 
The Corporation and Test Acts were unrepealed. The Game- 
Laws were horribly oppressive ; steel-traps and spring-guns 
were set all over the country ; prisoners tried for their lives 
could have no counsel. Lord Eldon and the Court of 
Chancery pressed heavily on mankind. Libel was punished 
by the most cruel and vindictive imprisonments. The 
principles of Political Economy were little understood. The 
laws of debt and conspiracy were upon the w^orst footing. 
The enormous wickedness of the slave-trade was tolerated. 
A thousand evils were in existence, which the talents of 
good and able men have since lessened or removed ; and these 
efforts have been not a little assisted by the honest boldness 
of the Edinburgh Review" 

Lord Brougham has left on record a similar account. 

" I at once entered warmly into Smith's scheme. Jeffrey, 
by nature always rather timid, w^as full of doubts and fears. 
It required all Smith's overpowering vivacity to argue and 
laugh Jeffrey out of his difficulties. There would, he said, 
be no lack of contributors. There was himself, ready to 
write any number of articles, or to edit the whole ; there was 
Je^rey, facile princeps in all kinds of literature; there was 
myself, full of mathematics and everything relating to the 
Colonies ; there was Horner for Political Economy, and 
Murray for General Subjects. Besides, might we not, from 
our great and never-to-be-doubted success, fairly hope to re- 
ceive help from such leviathans as Playfair, Dugald Stewart, 
Thomas Brown, Thomson, and others ? " 

These bright forecasts put heart of grace into the 
timid Jeffrey. Sydney Smith's jovial optimism pre- 
vailed. The financial part of the business was 



26 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. 

arranged with Constable in Edinburgh, and Longman 
in London : and the first number (clad in that famous 
livery of Blue and Buff ^ which the Whigs had copied 
from Charles Fox's coat and waistcoat) appeared in the 
autumn of 1802. The cover was thus inscribed — 

THE EDINBURGH REVIEW 

OR 

CRITICAL JOURNAL 

FOR 

Oct. 1802 — Jan. 1803 
To he continued quarterly 



Judex damnatur cum nocens absolvitur 

PuBLius Syrus. 

To this first number Sydney Smith contributed five 
articles. Four of these are reviews of sermons, and 
the fifth is a slashing attack on John Bowles,^ who 
had published an alarmist pamphlet on the designs 
of France. Jeffrey thought this attack too severe, 
but the author could not agree. He thought Bowles 
" a very stupid and a very contemptible fellow." 

" He has been hangman for these ten years to all the poor 
authors in England, is generally considered to be hired by 

1 '* Yet mark one caution, ere thy next Review 

Spread its light wings of Saffron and of Blue, 
Beware lest blundering Brougham spoil the sale, 
Turn Beef to Bannocks, Cauliflowers to Kail." 

Byron, English Bards and Scotch Reviewers. 

2 Barrister, and writer of political pamphlets between 1791 
and 1807. 



II.] THE EDINBUBGH BE VIEW 27 

government, and has talked about social order till he has 
talked himself into £600 or £700 per annum. That thei-e 
can be a fairer object for critical severity I cannot conceive." 

To the first four numbers Sydney Smith contributed 
in all eighteen articles ; and he continued to con- 
tribute, at irregular intervals, till 1827. The substance 
and style of his articles will be considered later on. 
As to his motives in writing, he stated them to 
Jeffrey as being, "First, the love of you; second, 
the habit of reviewing ; third, the love of money ; to 
which I may add a fourth, the love of punishing 
fraud and folly." 

Ticknor^ has put it on record that, late in life, 
Sydney Smith thus described his pecuniary relations 
with the Review : — " When I wrote an article, I used 
to send it to Jeffrey, and waited till it came out ; im- 
mediately after which I enclosed to him a bill in these 
words, or words like them : ' Francis Jeffrey, Esq., 
to Rev. Sydney Smith : To a very wise and witty 
article on such a subject, so many sheets, at forty-five 
guineas a sheet ' ; and the money always came." 

Sydney Smith "remained long enough in Edin- 
burgh to edit the first number" of the new review, 
but he now determined to leave Edinburgh and settle 
in London, and Jeffrey became editor. Regarding 
Holy Orders frankly as a profession, Sydney naturally 
desired professional advancement, and this of course 
could not be attained in presbyterian Scotland. "I 
could not hold myself justified to my wife and family 
if I were to sacrifice any longer to the love of present 

1 George Ticknor (1791-1871) , American traveller and man of 
letters. 



28 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. 

ease, those exertions which every man is bound to 
make for the improvement of his situation." 

He left Edinburgh with very mixed feelings, for 
he hated the place and loved its inhabitants. He 
called it "that energetic and unfragrant city." He 
dwelt in memory on its "odious smells, barbarous 
sounds, bad suppers, excellent hearts, and most 
enlightened and cultivated understandings." 

" No nation," he said, " has so large a stock of benevolence 
of heart, as the Scotch. Their temper stands anything but an 
attack on their climate. They would have yon even believe 
they can ripen fruit ; and, to be candid, I must own in 
remarkably warm summers I have tasted peaches that made 
most excellent pickles; and it is uj)on record that at the 
Siege of Perth, on one occasion the ammunition failing, their 
nectarines made admirable cannon-balls. Even the enlight- 
ened mind of Jeffrey cannot shake off the illusion that 
myrtles flourish at Craig Crook.^ In vain I have represented 
to him that they are of the genus Carduus, and pointed out 
their prickly peculiarities. . . . Jeffrey sticks to his myrtle 
illusions, and treats my attacks with as much contempt as if 
I had been a wild visionary, who had never breathed his 
caller air, nor lived and suffered under the rigour of his 
climate, nor spent five years in discussing metaphysics and 
medicine in that garret of the earth — that knuckle-end of 
England — that land of Calvin, oatcakes, and sulphur." 

As soon as he reached England, he wrote to his 
friend Jeffrey : — 

" I left Edinburgh with great heaviness of heart : I knew 
what I was leaving, and was ignorant to what I was going. 
My good fortune will be very great, if I should ever again 
fall into the society of so many liberal, correct, and instructed 
men, and live with them on such terms of friendship as I 
have done with you, and yon know whom, at Edinburgh." 

1 Jeffrey's house near Edinburgh 



II.] LONDON 29 

On arriving in London, in the autumn of 1803, 
the Sydney Smiths lodged for a while at 77 Upper 
Guilford Street, and soon afterwards established them- 
selves at 8 Doughty Street. Sydney's dearest friend, 
Francis Horner,^ had preceded him to London, and was 
already beginning to make his mark at the Bar, with- 
out, apparently, abandoning his philosophical pursuits. 
" He lives very high up in Garden Court, and thinks 
a good deal about Mankind." But he could spare a 
thought for individuals as well as for the race, and 
did a great deal towards securing his friend an in- 
troduction into congenial society. Doughty Street 
was a legal quarter, and among those with whom the 
Smiths soon made friends were Sir Samuel Komilly, 
James Scarlett (afterwards Lord Abinger), and Sir 
James Mackintosh. To these were added as time 
went on, Henry Grattan, Alexander Marcet, John 
William Ward (afterwards Lord Dudley), Samuel 
Rogers, Henry Luttrell, "Conversation" Sharp, and 
Lord Holland. 

Sydney Smith's eldest brother Eobert (" Bobus " ^) 
had married Caroline Vernon, Lord Holland's aunt. 
Sydney's politics were the politics of Holland House. 
Lord Holland was always recruiting for the Liberal 
army, and an Edinburgh Reviewer was a recruit worth 

1 (1778-1817.) Barrister and M.P. On his death, Sydney Smith 
wrote — "I say nothing of the great and miserable loss we have 
all sustained. He will always live in our recollection; and it 
will be useful to us all, in the great occasions of life, to reflect 
how Horner would act and think in them, if God had prolonged 
his life." 

2 Sydney Smith used to say, "Bobus and I have inverted 
the laws of nature. He rose by his gravity; I sank by my 
levity." 



30 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. 

capturing. So the hospitable doors were soon thrown 
open to the young clergyman from Doughty Street, 
who suddenly found himself a member of the most 
brilliant circle ever gathered under an English roof. 
In old age he used to declare, to the amusement of his 
friends, that as a young man he had been shy, but 
had wrestled with the temptation and overcome it. As 
regards the master ^ of Holland House, it was not easy 
to be shy in the presence of " that frank politeness 
which at once relieved all the embarrassment of the 
youngest and most timid writer or artist, who found 
himself for the first time among Ambassadors and 
Earls." ^ And even the imperious mistress^ of the 
house found her match in Sydney Smith, who only 
made fun of her foibles, and repaid her insolence with 
raillery. Referring to this period, when he had long 
outlived it, he said : — 

" I well remember, when Mrs. Sydney and I were young, 
in London, with no other equipage than my umbrella, 
when we went out to dinner in a hackney coach (a vehicle, by 
the bye, now become almost matter of history), when the 
rattling step was let down, and the proud, powdered red- 
plushes grinned, and her gown was fringed with straw, how 
the iron entered into my soul." 

One of the most useful friends whom the Smiths 
discovered in London was Mr. Thomas Bernard,'' after- 
wards a baronet of good estate in Buckinghamshire, 

1 Henry Richard (1773-1840), 3rd Lord Holland. 

2 Macaulay, " Lord Holland." 

3 The Lady Holland who figures so frequently in Sydney Smith's 
correspondence was Elizabeth Vassall (1770-1845), wife of the 3rd 
Lord Holland. Sydney Smith's daughter, Saba, did not become 
Lady Holland till 1853, when her husband, Dr. Holland, was made 
a baronet. " 4(1750-1818.) 



II.] LONDON 31 

and a zealous worker in all kinds of social and 
educational reform. Mr. Bernard was Treasurer of 
the Koyal Institution in Albemarle Street, which 
had been founded in 1799 ; and, with the laudable 
desire of putting a few pounds into a friend's pocket, 
he suggested that Sydney Smith should be invited to 
lecture before the Institution. The invitation was 
cordially given and gratefully accepted. The lecturer 
chose "Moral Philosophy^' for his subject, and the 
Introductory Lecture, in which he defined his terms, 
was delivered on the 10th of November 1804. The 
second and third lectures dealt with the History of 
Moral Philosophy; the fourth, with the Powers of 
External PercejDtion; the fifth, with Conception; the 
sixth, with Memory ; the seventh, with Imagination ; 
the eighth, with Eeason and Judgment ; and the ninth, 
with the Conduct of the Understanding. 

These lectures were treated by the author as form- 
ing one course, their general subject being "The 
Understanding." In February 1805 he wrote to his 
friend Jeffrey : — "I got through my first course I think 
creditably ; whether any better than creditably others 
know better than myself. I have still ten to read." 
This second course followed immediately on the first, 
and, under the general head of "Taste," discussed 
topics so various as " Wit and Humour," " The Beauti- 
ful," " The Sublime," " The Faculties of Animals as 
compared with those of Man," and " The Faculties of 
Beasts." By this time the lectures had become 
fashionable. One eye-witness writes: — 

" All Albemarle Street, and a part of Grafton Street, was 
rendered impassable by the concourse of carriages assembled 
there during the time of their delivery. There was not 



32 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. 

sufficient room for the persons assembling ; the lobbies were 
filled, and the doors into them from the lecture-room were 
left open." 

Horner reckoned ^^ from six to eight hundred hearers 
and not a seat to be procured, even if you go there an 
hour before the time.'' Sir Robert Peel, who had just 
left Harrow, was one of the audience, and remembered 
the lectures forty years after their delivery. As late 
as 1843, Dr. WhewelP inquired if they were still 
accessible. Sydney Smith, according to Lord Houghton, 
described his performances as "the most successful 
swindle of the season"; and, writing to Jeffrey in 
April 1805, he says: — 

"My lectures are just now at such an absurd pitch of 
celebrity, that I must lose a good deal of reputation before 
the public settles into a just equilibrium respecting them. 
I am most heartily ashamed of my own fame, because I am 
conscious I do not deserve it, and that the moment men of 
sense are provoked by the clamour to look into my claims, 
it will be at an end." 

Notwithstanding this premonition, the lecturer ad- 
ventured on a third coarse, which was delivered at the 
same place in the spring of 1806. ^^ Galleries were 
erected, which had never before been required, and 
the success was complete." The general subject of this 
third course was " The Active Powers of the Mind," 
and it dealt with " The Evil Affections," " The Benevo- 
lent Affections," "The Passions," "The Desires," 
" Surprise, Novelty, and Variety," and " Habit." 

As soon as the lectures were delivered, the lecturer 
threw the manuscripts into the fire; and it is satis- 

1 William Whewell (1794-1866), Master of Trinity College, Cam- 
bridge, author of Elements of Morality, 1845. 



II.] MORAL PHILOSOPHY 33 

factory to find that he did not take his performance 
very seriously, or set a very high value on his philo- 
sophical attainments. In 1843 he wrote, in reply to 
Dr. Whe well's inquiry : — 

" My lectures are gone to the dogs, and are utterly for- 
gotten. I knew nothing of IMoral Philosophy, but I was 
thoroughly aware that I wanted £200 to furnish my house. 
The success, however, was prodigious; all Albemarle 
Street blocked up with carriages, and such an uproar as 
I never remember to have seen excited by any other literary 
imposture. Every week I had a new theory about Concep- 
tion and Perception, and supported it by a natural manner, 
a torrent of words, and an impudence scarcely credible in this 
prudent age. Still, in justice to myself, I must say there were 
some good things iu them. But good and bad are all gone." 

As a matter of fact, however, they were not "all 
gone." Mrs. Smith had rescued the manuscripts, a 
good deal damaged, from the flames, and after her 
husband's death she published the three courses in one 
volume under the title. Elementary Sketches of Moral 
Philosophy. 

Was it worth while to publish them ? The answer 
must depend on the object of publication. If the book 
was meant to be considered as a serious contribu- 
tion to mental science, the manuscripts might as well 
have remained where their author threw them. If, 
on the other hand, it was intended only to show the 
versatility, adroitness, and plausibility of a young 
man in need of money, nothing could have better 
illustrated those aspects of Sydney Smith's char- 
acter and career. He is thirty-three years old, married, 
with an increasing family, and no means of subsistence 
beyond periodical journalism and odd jobs of clerical 



34 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. 

duty. "Two or three random sermons," he says, "I 
have discharged, and thought I perceived that the 
greater part of the congregation thought me mad. 
The clerk was as pale as death in helping me off with 
my gown, for fear I should bite him." He wants 
money to furnish his house. A benevolent friend 
obtains him the opportunity of lecturing. It is not 
uncharitable to suppose that he chooses a subject 
in which accurate knowledge and close argument will 
be less requisite than fluency, fancy, bold statement, 
and extraordinarily felicitous illustration. The five 
years spent in Edinburgh can now be turned to pro- 
fitable account. Dugald Stewart's lectures can be 
exhumed, decorated, and reproduced. The whole book 
reeks of Scotland. The lecturer sets out by declaring 
that Moral Philosophy is taught in the Scotch 
Universities alone. England knows nothing about it. 
At Edinburgh Moral Philosophy means Mental Philo- 
sophy, and is concerned w4th "the faculties of the 
mind and the effects which our reasoning powers 
and our passions produce upon the actions of our 
lives." It has nothing to do with ethics or duty. 
And the definition used in Edinburgh is also used 
in Albemarle Street. Dugald Stewart and Thomas 
Brown ^ and Adam Smith, Hume and Keid and 



1 Sydney Smith wrote his friend Sir George Philips in 1836 — 
"Thomas Brown was an intimate friend of mine, and used to 
dine with me regularly every Sunday in Edinburgh. He was 
a Lake poet, a profound metaphysician, and one of the most 
virtuous men that ever lived. As a metaphysician, Dugald 
Stewart was a humbug to him. Brown had real talents for 
the thing. You must recognize, in reading Brown, many of 
those arguments with which I have so often reduced you to 
silence in metaphysical discussions. Your discovery of Brown 



II.] MORAL PHILOSOPHY 35 

Oswald and Beattie and Ferguson, are names which 
meet us on every page. The lecturer has learnt 
from Scotsmen, and reproduces what the Scotsmen 
taught him. Mind and Matter are two great realities. 
When people are informed that all thought is ex- 
plained by vibrations and " vibratiuncles " of the 
brain, and that what they consider their arms and 
legs are not arms and legs but ideas, then, says the 
lecturer, they will pardonably identify Philosophy 
wdth Lunacy. " Bishop Berkeley destroyed this world 
in one octavo volume ; and nothing remained after his 
time but Mind ; which experienced a similar fate at 
the hand of Mr. Hume in 1737. . . . But is there any 
one out of Bedlam who doubts of the existence of 
matter ? who doubts of his own personal identity? or 
of his consciousness ? or of the general credibility of 
memory ? " 

From this rough-and-ready delimitation of the area 
within which Moral Philosophy must work, if it is to 
escape the reproach of insanity, the lecturer goes on, 
as becomes a divine, to champion his study against 
the reproach of tending to Atheism. He groups all 
our senses, faculties, and impulses together, and says : 
^^All these things Moral Philosophy observes, and, 
observing, adores the Being from whence they pro- 
ceed." 

Having thus defined his subject, the lecturer goes 
on, in his second and third lectures, to trace the 
history of Moral Philosophy, from Pythagoras to 
Mrs. Trimmer. Plato is praised for beauty of style, 

is amusing. Go on! You will detect Dryden if you persevere; 
bring to light John Milton, and drag William Shakspeare from 
his ill-deserved obscurity! " 



36 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. 

and blamed for mistiness of doctrine. Aristotle is 
contrasted, greatly to his disadvantage, with Bacon. 
" Volumes of Aristotelian philosophy have been written 
which, if piled one upon another, would have equalled 
the Tower of Babel in Height, and far exceeded it in 
Confusion." But to Bacon " we are indebted for an 
almost daily extension of our knowledge of the laws 
of nature in the outward world; and the same 
modest and cautious spirit of enquiry, extended to 
Moral Philosophy, will probably give us clear, intelli- 
gible ideas of our spiritual nature." 

The remaining lectures of this course are those 
which suffered most severely from the flames, and are 
indeed in so fragmentary a condition as to render any 
close criticism of them impossible. But enough has been 
quoted to show that Sydney Smith, so far as he was 
in any sense concerned with philosophy, was a sworn 
foe to mysticism and ideality, and a worshipper of 
Baconian common-sense even in the sphere of mind 
and soul. 

He was never tired of poking fun at his philoso- 
phical friends in Edinburgh. When sending some 
Scotch grouse to Lady Holland, he said — "I take the 
liberty to send you two brace of grouse — curious, be- 
cause killed by a Scotch metaphysician : in other and 
better language, they are mere ideas, shot by other 
ideas, out of a pure intellectual notion called a gun." 
In another letter to the same correspondent he says — 
" I hope you are reading Mr. Stewart's book, and are 
far gone in the Philosophy of Mind — a science, as he 
repeatedly tells us, still in its infancy. I propose, 
myself, to wait till it comes to years of discretion." 

To his friend Jeffrey he wrote in 1804 : — 



II.] MORAL PHILOSOPHY 37 

"I exhort you to restrain the violent tendency of your 
nature for analysis, and to cultivate synthetical propensities. 
What is virtue ? What 's the use of truth ? What 's the use 

of honour? What's a guinea but a d d yellow circle? 

The whole effort of youi' mind is to destroy. Because others 
build slightly and eagerly, you employ yourself in kicking 
down their houses, and contract a sort of aversion for the 
more honourable, useful, and difficult task of building well 
yourself." 

He reports a saying of liis little boy's, " which in 
Scotland would be heard as of high metaphysical 
promise. Emily was asking wh}" one flower was blue, 
and another pink, and another yellow. ^Why, in 
short,' said Douglas, 'it is their nature ; and, when we 
say that, what do we mean ? It is onlj^ another word 
for mystery ; it only means that we know nothing at all 
about the matter.' This observation from a child eight 
years old is not common." 

The second and third courses of lectures would 
force us (even if we had not the lecturer's confession 
to guide us) irresistibly to the conclusion that he had 
said all he knew about Moral Philosophy, and rather 
more, in the first course. It is only by the exercise of 
a genial violence that his dissertations on Wit and 
Humour, Irish Bulls, Taste, Animals, and Habit, can 
be forced to take shelter under the dignified title of 
^Moral Philosophy. But, philosophical defects apart, 
they are excellent lectures. They abound in miscel- 
laneous knowledge and out-of-the-way reading, and 
they bristle with illustrations which have passed into 
the common anecdotage of mankind. 

" In the late rebellion in Ireland, the rebels, who had con- 
ceived a high degTeeof indignation against some great banker, 
passed a resolution that they would burn his notes, which 



38 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. 

accordingly they did, with great assiduity; forgetting that, 
in burning his notes, tliey were destroying his debts, and that 
for every note which went into the flames, a correspondent 
value went into the banker's pocket." 

In every war of the last century this story has been 
revived. It would be curious to see if it can be 
traced back further than Sydney Smith. 

From the lecture on Habit, I cull this pleasing 
anecdote : — 

" The famous Isaac Barrow, the mathematician and divine, 
had an habitual dislike of dogs, and it proceeded from the 
following cause : — He was a very early riser ; and one morn- 
ing, as he was walking in the garden of a friend's house, with 
whom he was staying, a fierce mastiff, that used to be chained 
all day, and let loose all night, for the security of the house, 
set upon him with the greatest fury. The doctor caught 
him by the throat, threw him, and lay upon him ; and, whilst 
he kept him down, considered what he should do in that 
exigence. The account the doctor gave of it to his friends 
was, that he had once a mind to have killed the dog ; but he 
altered his resolution upon recollecting that it would be 
unjust, since the dog only did his duty, and he himself was 
to blame for rambling out so early. At length he called out 
so loud, that he was heard by some in the house, who came 
out, and speedily separated the mastiff and the mathematician. 
However, it is added, that the adventure gave the doctor a 
strong habitual aversion for dogs ; and I dare say, if the truth 
were known, fixed in the dog's mind a still stronger aversion 
to doctors." 

This last sentence is in exactly the same vein of 
humour as the comment, in the review of Waterton's 
Travels,^ on the snake that bit itself. " Mr. Waterton, 
though much given to sentiment, made a Labairi snake 
bite itself, but no bad consequences ensued — nor would 

1 See p. 185. 



II.] MORAL PHILOSOPHY 39 

any bad consequences ensue, if a court-martial was to 
order a sinful soldier to give himself a thousand lashes. 
It is barely possible that the snake had some faint 
idea whom and what he was biting." 

The house which was furnished with the products 
of this Moral Philosophy was No. 18 Orchard Street, 
Portman Square, and here the Smiths lived till they 
left London for a rural parish. Meanwhile, the 
excellent Bernard had secured some clerical employ- 
ment for his friend. Through his influence the 
Eev. Sydney Smith was elected "alternate Evening 
Preacher at the Foundling Hospital," on the 27th of 
March 1805. He tried to open a Proprietary Chapel 
on his own account, but was foiled by the obstinacy 
of the Eector in whose parish it was situate.^ He 
was appointed Morning Preacher at Berkeley Chapel, 
Mayfair, and combined his duties there with similar 
duties at Fitzroy Chapel, now St. Saviour's Church, 
Fitzroy Square. ^ These various appointments, coupled 
with his lectures at the Eoyal Institution, brought 
him increasingly into public notice. His preaching 



1 See his Essay on "Toleration" : — "A chapel belonging to 
the Swedenborgians, or Methodists of the New Jerusalem, was 
offered, two or three years since, in London, to a clergyman of 
the Establishment. The proprietor was tired of his irrational ten- 
ants, and wished for better doctrine. The rector, with every 
possible compliment to the fitness of the person in question, 
positively refused the application ; and the church remains in 
the hands of Methodists." 

2 Sir David Wilkie (1785-18il) wrote in 1808: — "To church, 
where I heard Sydney Smith preach a sermon, which, for its elo- 
quence and power of reasoning, exceeded anything I had ever 
heard. The subject was the Conversion of St. Paul, of which he 
proved the authenticity, in opposition to all the objections and 
doubts of infidelity." 



40 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. 

was admired by some important people. His contribu- 
tions to the Edinburgh, so entirely unlike anything 
else in periodical literature, were eagerly anticipated 
and keenly canvassed. It was reported that King 
George iii. had read them, and had said, " He is a 
very clever fellow, but he will never be a bishop.'^ 
His social gifts won him friends wherever he went ; 
and Lord and Lady Holland, though themselves not 
addicted to the public observances of religion, were 
anxious to promote his professional advancement ; but 
this was not easy. " From the beginning of the 
century," he wrote, " to the death of Lord Liverpool, 
was an awful period for those who had the mis- 
fortune to entertain Liberal opinions, and were too 
honest to sell them for the ermine of the judge or 
the lawn of the prelate — a long and hopeless career 
in your profession, the chuckling grin of noodles, 
the sarcastic leer of the genuine political rogue — 
prebendaries, deans, and bishops made over your 
head — reverend renegadoes advanced to the highest 
dignities of the Church, for helping to rivet the 
fetters of Catholic and Protestant dissenters, and no 
more chance of a Whig administration than of a thaw 
in Zembla." 

But this gloomy period of oppression and exclusion 
was broken by a transient gleam. Pitt died on the 
23rd of January 1806, and Lord Grenville^ succeeded 
him, at the head of the ministry of " All the Talents.'' 
In this place, perhaps, may be not unsuitably inserted 
the ejDitaph which Sydney Smith suggested for Pitt's 
statue in Hanover Square. 

1 William Wyndham Grenville (1759-1834) , created Lord Gren- 
ville in 1790. 



II.] PREFERMENT 41 

To the Right Honourable William Pitt 
Whose errors in foreign policy 
And lavish expenditure of our Resources at home 
Have laid the foundation of National Bankruptcy 
And scattered the seeds of Revolution, 
This Monument was erected 
By many weak men, who mistook his eloquence for wisdom 
And his insolence for magnanimity. 
By many unworthy men whom he had ennobled. 
And by many base men, whom he had enriched at the Public 
Expense. 
But for Englishmen 
This Statue raised from such motives 
Has not been erected in vain. 
They learn from it those dreadful abuses 
Which exist under the mockery 
Of a free Representation, 
And feel the deep necessity 
Of a great and eflScient Reform. 

In Lord Grenville's ministry Lord Erskine became 
Lord Chancellor, and Lord Holland Lord Privy Seal. 
In the autumn of 1806 the living of Foston-le-Clay, 
eight miles from York, fell vacant. It was in the 
Chancellor's gift ; the Lord Privy Seal said a word 
to his colleague; the Chancellor cordially accepted 
" the nominee of Lord and Lady Holland " ; and that 
nominee was Sydney Smith. Foston was worth £500 
a year, and Dr. Markham, Archbishop of York, 
allowed the new Eector to be non-resident, accepting 
his duties at the Foundling Hospital as a sufficient 
justification for absence from his parish. Early in 
1807 he preached at the Temple Church, and 
published by request, a sermon on Toleration, which 
drew this testimony from a scandalized peer ^ : — 

1 Morton Eden (1751-1830), created Lord Henley in 1799. 



42 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. 

" Sydney Smith preached yesterday a sermon on the 
Catholic question. ... It would have made an admirable 
party speech in Parliament, but as a sermon, the author 
deserved the Star Chamber, if it still existed." 

During the summer of 1807, the Smiths lived in a 
hired house at Sonning on the Thames; and one of 
their neighbours was the great civilian Sir William 
Scott,^ afterwards Lord Stowell (who deserves to be 
honoured for having coined the phrase — "The elegant 
simplicity of the Three per cents"). The old judge 
took a fancy to the young clergyman, and pointed out, 
in a friendly spirit, how much he had lost by his 
devotion to Whiggism. In later life, Sydney Smith 
wrote to Lord John EusselP — '^ I remember with 
pleasure, thirty years ago, old Lord Stowell saying 
to me, ' Mr. Smith, you would have been a much 
richer man if you had joined us.'" 

But the Tory table-talk of Earley^ was powerless 
to seduce this staunch partisan from his political 
allegiance ; and, just at this period, he was meditating 
the most skilful and the most resounding blow which 
he ever struck for freedom and justice. 

It was a critical time. The besotted resistance of 
the King to the slightest concession in favour of his 
Eoman Catholic subjects had driven the ministry of 
" All the Talents " out of office in the spring. The 
High Tories succeeded them, and the General Election 
which ensued on the change of government gave a 
strong majority for " No Popery " and reaction. Mean- 

1 (1745-1836), created Lord Stowell in 1821. 

2 (1792-1878). 

3 A house which Lord Stowell acquired by his marriage with an 
heiress, Anna Maria Bagnall. 



II.] PREFERMENT 43 

while the greatest genius that the world has ever seen 
was wading through slaughter to a universal throne, 
and no effective resistance had as yet been offered to 
a progress which menaced the freedom of Europe and 
the existence of its states. At such a juncture it 
seemed to Sydney Smith that England could not 
spare a single soldier or sailor, nor afford to alienate 
the loyalty of a single citizen. "Buonaparte," he 
wrote, " is as rapid and as terrible as the lightning 
of God ; would he were as transient." It was nothing 
short of national suicide to reject men desirous of 
serving in the army and navy on account of their 
beliefs, to madden English Romanists by defraud- 
ing them of their civil rights, and to outrage the 
whole people of Ireland by affixing a legal stigma to 
their religion. 

His musings on this pregnant theme took shape in — 

A LETTER 

ON 

THE SUBJECT 

OF 

THE CATHOLICS 

TO 

MY BROTHER ABRAHAM 

WHO 

LIVES IN THE COUNTRY 
By peter PLYMLEY. 

This Letter was published in the summer of 1807, and 
" its effect was like a spark on a heap of gunpowder." 
It was followed by nine more, bearing the same title, 
four of which appeared in the same year and five in 



44 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. ii. 

the next. A little later Sydney Smith wrote to Lord 
Grey — "I wish I could write as well as Plymley : 
but, if I could, where is such a case to be found? 
When had any lawyer such a brief?" 

In 1808 Peter Plymley^ s Letters were collected and 
published in a pamphlet, and the pamphlet ran through 
sixteen editions. " The government of that day," wrote 
Sydney Smith in 1839, " took great pains to find out 
the author ; all that they could find out was that they 
were brought to Mr. Budd, the publisher, by the Earl 
of Lauderdale.^ Somehow or another it came to be 
conjectured that I was the author.^ . . . They had an 
immense circulation at the time, and I think above 
twenty thousand copies were sold." Some little space 
must be bestowed upon these masterpieces of humour 
and wisdom. 

1 James, 8th Earl of Lauderdale (1759-1839). 

2 Byron, in English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, attributes the 
authorship of Peter Plymley to "Smug Sydney." See also his 
allusion to " Peter Pith " in Don Juan, canto xvi. 



CHAPTER III 



PETER PLYMLEY 



Peter Plymley^s Letters are supposed to be written 
by a Londoner, who is in favour of removing the 
secular disabilities of Roman Catholics, to his brother 
Abraham, the parson of a rural parish. They proceed 
throughout on the assumption that the parson is a 
kind-hearted, honest, and conscientious man; but 
rather stupid, grossly ignorant of public affairs, and 
frightened to death by a bogy of his own imagining. 
That bogy is the idea of a Popish conspiracy against 
the crown, church, and commonwealth. Abraham 
communicates his alarms to his brother Peter in 
London, and Peter's Letters are replies to these out- 
pourings. 

Letter I. begins by assuring Abraham that there is 
no truth in the rumour that the Pope has landed on 
English soil, and has been housed by the Spencers or 
the Hollands or the Grenvilles. " The best-informed 
clergy in the neighbourhood of the metropolis are 
convinced that the rumour is without foundation." 
Having set this fear at rest, Peter deals with Abra- 
ham's argument. — 

" Yon say that the Roman Catholics interpret the Scriptm-es 
in an unorthodox manner. Very likely. ... But I want 
soldiers and sailors for the state ; I want to make a greater 

45 



46 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. 

use than I now can do of a poor country full of men ; I want 
to render the military service popular among the Irish ; to 
check the power of France ; to make every possible exertion 
for the safety of Europe, which in twenty years' time will be 
nothing but a mass of French slaves : and then you, and ten 
thousand other such boobies as you, call out — ' For God's 
sake, do not think of raising cavalry and infantry in Ireland ! 
They interpret the Epistle to Timothy in a different manner 
from what we do. . . .' What ! when Turk, Jew, Heretic, 
Infidel, Catholic, Protestant, are all combined against this 
country; when men of every religious persuasion, and no 
religious persuasion, when the population of half the globe, is 
up in arms against us; are we to stand examining our generals 
and armies as a bishop examines candidates for holy orders ? 
and to suffer no one to bleed for England who does not agree 
with you about the Second of Timothy ? " 

And then Peter disclaims the reproach of unfriend- 
liness to the Established Church. — 

" I love the Church as well as you do ; but you totally 
mistake the nature of an Establishment, when you contend 
that it ought to be connected with the military and civil 
careers of every individual in the state. It is quite right 
that there should be one clergyman in every parish interpret- 
ing the Scriptures after a particular manner, ruled by a 
regular hierarchy, and paid with a rich proportion of haycocks 
and wheat sheaves. When I have laid this foundation for a 
national religion in the state — when I have placed ten thousand 
well-educated men in different parts of the kingdom to preach 
it up, and compelled every one to pay them, whether they 
hear them or not — I have taken such measures as I know 
must always procure an immense majority in favour of the 
Established Church ; but I can go no farther. I cannot set 
up a civil inquisition, and say to one — ' You shall not be a 
butcher, because you are not orthodox' ; and prohibit another 
from brewing, and a third from administering the law, and a 
fourth from defending the country. If common justice did 
not prohibit me from such a conduct, common sense would." 



III.] PETER PLYMLEY 47 

Persecution, Peter goes on to say, makes martyrs. 
Fanatics delight in the feeling that they are persecuted 
for righteousness' sake ; and, the more they are harried, 
the more tenaciously they cling to their misbeliefs. 

"This is just the effect your disqualifying laws have 
produced. They have fed Dr. Rees and Dr. Kippis ; ^ crowded 
the congregation of the Old Jewry ^ to suffocation ; and enabled 
every sublapsarian, and supralapsarian, and seniipelagian, 
clergyman to build himself a neat brick chapel, and live with 
some distant resemblance to the state of a gentleman." 

But, says Abraham, the King is bound by his Coro- 
nation Oath to resist the emancipation of the Roman 
Catholics. Peter replies — 

" Suppose Bonaparte were to retrieve the only very great 
blunder he has made, and were to succeed, after repeated 
trials, in making an impression upon Ireland, do you think 
we should hear anything of the impediment of a Coronation 
Oath ? or would the spirit of this country tolerate for an hour 
such ministers and such unheard-of nonsense, if the most 
distant prospect existed of conciliating the Catholics by every 
species even of the most abject concession ? And yet, if your 
argument is good for anything, the Coronation Oath ought to 
reject, at such a moment, every tendency to conciliation, and 
to bind Ireland for ever to the Crown of France." 

After a cursory reference to Abraham's fears about 
Popish fires and faggots, and a reminder that " there 
were as many persons put to death for religious opin- 
ions under the mild Elizabeth as under the bloody 
Mary,'' Peter concludes with these vigorous sentences — 

" You tell me I am a party man. I hope I shall always be 

1 Abraham Rees, D.D. (1743-1825), and Andrew Kippis, D.D. 
(1723-1795), were Presbyterian ministers of great repute. 

2 The meeting-house in Old Jewry was built in 1701 and destroyed 
in 1808. It " covered 2600 square feet, and was lit with six bow 
windows." Dr. Rees was its last minister. 



48 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. 

so, when I see my country in the hands of a pert London 
joker 1 and a second-rate lawyer.^ Of the first, no other 
good is known than that he makes pretty Latin verses ; the 
second seems to me to have the head of a comitry parson and 
the tongue of an Old Bailey barrister. If I could see good 
measures pursued, I care not who is in power ; but I have a 
passionate love for common justice and for common sense, and 
I abhor and despise every man who builds up his political 
fortune upon their ruin." 

Abraham's next objection to emancipation appears 
to have been that a Roman Catholic will not respect 
an oath. " Why not ? " asks Peter in Letter II. 
" What upon earth has kept him out of Parliament, or 
excluded him from all the offices whence he is excluded, 
but his respect for oaths ? There is no law which pro- 
hibits a Catholic to sit in Parliament. There could 
be no such law ; because it is impossible to find out 
what passes in the interior of any man's mind. . . . 
The Catholic is excluded from Parliament because he 
will not swear that he disbelieves the leading doctrines 
of his religion. The Catholic asks you to abolish 
some oaths which oppress him; your answer is, that 
he does not respect oaths. Then why subject him to 
the test of oaths ? The oaths keep him out of Parlia- 
ment ; why, then he respects them. Turn which way 
you will, either your laws are nugatory, or the Catholic 
is bound by religious obligations as you are." 

From Eoman Catholics in general, Peter now turns 
to the Eoman Catholics of Ireland. — 

" The moment the very name of Ireland is mentioned, the 
English seem to bid adieu to common feeling, common 
prudence, and common sense, and to act with the barbarity of 



1 George Canning (1770-1827). 

2 Spencer Perceval (17G2-1812), 



III.] PETER PLYMLEY 49 

tyrants and the fatuity of idiots. Whatever your opinion may 
be of the follies of the Roman Catholic religion, remember 
they are the follies of four millions of human beings, increas- 
ing rapidly in numbers, wealth and intelligence, who, if firmly 
united with this country, would set at defiance the power of 
France, and, if once wrested from their alliance with England, 
would in three years render its existence as an independent 
nation absolutely impossible. You speak of danger to the 
Establishment ; I request to know when the Establishment 
was ever so much in danger as when Hoche was in Bantry 
Bay, and w^hether all the books of Bossuet, or the arts of the 
Jesuits, were half so terrible? . . . Whatever you think of 
the Catholics, there they are — you cannot get rid of them. 
Your alternative is to give them a lawful place for stating 
their grievances, or an unlawful one. If you do not admit 
them to the House of Commons, they will hold their Parlia- 
ment in Potatoe Place, Dublin, and be ten times as violent 
and inflammatory as they would be in Westminster. Nothing 
would give me such an idea of security as to see twenty or 
thirty Catholic gentlemen in Parliament, looked upon by all 
the Catholics as the fair and proper organ of their party. I 
should have thought it the height of good fortune that such 
a wish existed on their part, and the very essence of madness 
and ignorance to reject it." 

A noble lord — his name unluckily has perished — 
had attempted to salve his own conscience and that of 
his colleagues in hostility to the Eoman claims, by 
affirming that exclusion from civil office was not per- 
secution ; and Peter handles him with delighted 
vigour, in a passage which, more than eighty years 
later, was quoted with enthusiasm by Mr. Gladstone.^ — 

" A distinction, I perceive, is taken by one of the most 
feeble noblemen in Great Britain, between persecution and 
the deprivation of political power ; whereas there is no more 

1 When it was proposed to exclude King's College from the re- 
constituted University of London. 

K 



50 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. 

distinction between these two things than there is between 
him who makes the distinction and a booby. If I strip off 
the relic-covered jacket of a Catholic and give him twenty 
stripes, I persecute. If I say, ' Everybody in the town where 
you live shall be a candidate for lucrative and honourable 
offices but you, who are a Catholic,' I do not persecute! 
What barbarous nonsense is this ! As if degradation was 
not as great an evil as bodily pain, or as severe poverty ; as 
if I could not be as great a tyrant by saying, ' You shall not 
enjoy,' as by saying, ' You shall suffer.' . . . You may not 
be aware of it, most reverend Abraham, but you deny their 
freedom to the Catholics upon the same principle that Sarah 
your wife refuses to give the receipt for a ham or a goose- 
berry dumpling. She values her receipts, not because they 
secure to her a certain flavour, but because they remind her 
that her neiglibours want it — a feeling laughable in a priestess, 
shameful in a priest; venial when it withholds the blessings 
of a ham, tyrannical and execrable when it narrows the boon 
of religious freedom." 

Letter III. gives utterance to a genuine alarm 
inspired by Bonaparte's uninterrupted progress. 
England is confronted by the most formidable ad- 
versary whom she has ever known, and her defence 
is entrusted to Canning and Perceval. Canning's 
armoury contains nothing more serviceable than 
" schoolboy jokes and doggerel rhymes, an affronting 
petulance, and the tones and gesticulations of Mr. 
Pitt." Perceval, instead of looking after the national 
defences, 

"will bestow the strictest attention on the smaller parts of 
ecclesiastical government. In the last agonies of England he 
will bring in a bill to regulate Easter offerings ; and he will 
adjust the stipends of curates, when the flag of France is 
unfurled on the hills of Kent.i . . . Whatever can be done 

1 Spencer Perceval brought in several bills to compel non- 
resident incumbents to pay their curates a living wage. 



III.] PETER PLYMLEY 51 

by very mistaken notions of the piety of a Christian, and by 
very wretched imitations of the eloquence of Mr. Pitt, will 
be done by these two gentlemen " ; 

but these are no adequate defences against the genius 
and ambition of Bonaparte. "There is nothing to 
oppose to the conqueror of the world but a small table- 
wit, and the sallow Surveyor of the Meltings." ^ 

Abraham, terrified by those prognostics, asks Peter 
if he thinks it possible for England to survive the 
recent misfortunes of Europe. Peter replies that if 
Bonaparte lives, and a great deal is not immediately 
conceded to the Eoman Catholics, England must per- 
ish, and perish in disgrace. — 

" It is doubly miserable to become slaves abroad, because 
we would be tyrants at home ; and to perish because we 
have raised up worse enemies within, from our own bigotry, 
than we are exposed to without from the unprincipled ambi- 
tion of France." 

Then he goes on to a famous apologue. England is 
a frigate, attacked by a corsair of immense strength 
and size. The rigging is cut, there is water in the 
hold, men are dropping off very fast, the peril is 
extreme. How do you think the captain (whom we 
will call Perceval) acts? Does he call all hands on 
deck and talk to them of king, country, glory, sweet- 
hearts, gin, French prisons, wooden shoes, old England, 
and hearts of oak — till they give three cheers, rush to 
their guns, and, after a tremendous conflict, succeed in 
beating off the enemy ? — 

" Not a syllable of all this : this is not the manner in 
which the honourable commander goes to work. The first 

1 Spencer Perceval obtained the sinecure office of Surveyor of 
the Meltings and Clerk of the Irons in 1791. 



52 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. 

thing he does is to secure twenty or thirty of his prime 
sailors who happen to be Catholics, to clap them in irons, 
and set over them a guard of as many Protestants. Having 
taken this admirable method of defending himself against 
his infidel opponents, he goes upon deck, reminds the sailors, 
in a very bitter harangue, that they are of different religions; 
exhorts the Episcopal gunner not to trust to the Presbyterian 
quartermaster, issues positive orders that the Catholics should 
be fired at upon the first appearance of discontent ; rushes 
through blood and brains, examining his men in the Cate- 
chism and XXXIX. articles, and positively forbids every one 
to spunge or ram who has not taken the Sacrament accord- 
ing to the Church of England. . . . Built as she is of heart 
of oak, and admirably manned, is it possible with such a 
captain to save this ship from going to the bottom ? " 

Abraham's next argument against a policy of con- 
cession is that it would only lead to further demands 
in the future. In reply to this Peter makes vigorous 
use of Spencer Perceval's official career. Perceval had 
held a sinecure for several years ; at the time of 
writing he was Chancellor of the Exchequer ; and he 
had just attempted, and been defeated in attempting, 
a most nefarious job, by which the revenues of the 
Duchy of Lancaster were to have been secured to him 
for life. 

" Suppose the person to whom he applied for the Meltings 
had withstood every plea of wife and fourteen children, no 
business, and good character, and had refused him this paltry 
little office, because he might hereafter attempt to get hold of 
the revenues of the Duchy of Lancaster for life ; woidd not 
Mr. Perceval have contended eagerly against the injustice 
of refusing moderate requests, because immoderate ones 
may hereafter be made? Would he not have said (and said 
truly), ' Leave such exorbitant attempts as these to the general 
indignation of the Commons, who will take care to defeat 



III.] PETER PLYMLEY 53 

them when they do occur ; but do not refuse me the Irons and 
the Meltings now, because I may totally lose sight of all 
moderation hereafter ' ? " 

Letter IV. begins with a reply to those who con- 
tended that England ought not to pay for the educa- 
tion of the Eoman Catholic clergy in Ireland. 

" The whole sura now appropriated by Government to the 
religious education of four millions of Christians is £13,000 
— a sum about one hundred times as large being appropriated 
in the same country to about one-eighth part of this number of 
Protestants. AVhen it was proposed to raise this grant from 
£8000 to £13,000, its present amount, this sum was objected 
to by that most indulgent of Christians, Mr. Spencer Perceval, 
as enormous; he himself having secured for his own eating 
and drinking, and the eating and drinking of the Master and 
Miss Percevals, the reversionary sum of £21,000 a year of the 
public money,^ and having just failed in a desperate and 
rapacious attempt to secure to himself for life the revenues of 
the Duchy of Lancaster; and the best of it is, that this 
Minister, after abusing his predecessors for their impious 
bounty to the Catholics, has found himself compelled, from 
the apprehension of immediate danger, to grant the sum in 
question." 

Abraham now goes on to plead that our present 
relations with the Eoman Catholics date from the 
Revolution of 1688, and that laws passed at that 
period are unalterable. To this Peter replies : — 

" When I hear any man talk of an unalterable law, the 
only effect it produces upon me is to convince me that he 
is an unalterable fool. . . . Besides, it happens that, to the 
principal incapacities under which the Irish suffer, they were 

1 Spencer Perceval procured the reversion of his brother's office 
of Registrar to the Court of Admiralty, and burked a parliamentary 
inquiry into reversions generally. 



64 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. 

subjected after that great and glorious Revolution, to which 
we are indebted for so many blessings. . . . The Catholics 
w^ere not excluded from the Irish House of Commons, or 
military commands, before the 3rd and 4th of William and 
JMary, and the 1st and 2nd of Queen Anne." 

Then he goes on to cite the example of Scotland. 
There the English government had, in times pa^t, 
tried to force the national conscience in matters of 
faith and worship. The government had failed, as 
it deserved to fail, for Scotland was resolute and 
rebellious. Then "the true and only remedy was 
applied. The Scotch were suffered to worship God 
after their own tiresome manner, without pain, penalty, 
and privation." And Scotland had become a contented, 
loyal, and profitable part of the United Kingdom. 
Exactly the reverse was happening in Ireland. A 
vehement hostility to the Union was spreading through 
all parts of the country and all classes of the people. 

" The Irish see that their national independence is gone, 
without having recovered any single one of those advantages 
which they were taught to expect from the sacrifice. All 
good things were to flow from the Union ; they have none 
of them gained anything. Every man's pride is wounded 
by it ; no man's interest is promoted. In the seventh year 
of that Union, four million Catholics, lured by all kinds of 
promises to yield up the separate dignity and sovereignty 
of their country, are forced to squabble with such a man as 
Mr. Spencer Perceval for five thousand pounds with which 
to educate their children in their own mode of worship ; he, 
the same Mr. Spencer, having secured to his own Protestant 
self a reversionary portion of the public money amounting to 
four times that sum. . . . Our conduct to Ireland, during 
the whole of this war, has been that of a man who subscribes 
to hospitals, weeps at charity-sermons, carries out broth and 
blankets to beggars, and then comes home and beats his 



III. J PETER PLYMLEY 65 

wife and children. We have compassion for the victims of 
all other oppression and injustice, except our own." 

It is of no use for statesmen to ignore tlie Irish 
question. It is much too urgent and too dangerous 
a topic to be long suppressed. — 

" A man may command his family to say nothing more 
about the stone, and surgical operations; but the ponderous 
malice still lies upon the nerve, and gets so big that the 
patient breaks his own law of silence, clamours for the knife, 
and expires under its late operation. Believe me, you talk 
folly when you speak of suppressing the Irish question. I 
wish to God that the case admitted of such a remedy . . . 
but, if the wants of the Catholics are not heard in the manly 
tones of Lord Grenville, or the servile drawl of Lord Castle- 
reagh, they will be heard ere long in the madness of mobs, 
and the conflicts of armed men." 

In Letter V. Peter turns upon Abraham, who cannot 
believe that England will ever be ruined and conquered, 
and says : — 

" Alas! so reasoned, in their time, the Austrian, Russian, 
and Prussian Plymleys. But the English are brave ? So 
were all these nations. Y'ou might get together an hundred 
thousand men individually brave ; but, without generals 
capable of commanding such a machine, it would be as useless 
as a first-rate man-of-war manned by Oxford clergymen or 
Parisian shopkeepers. I do not say this to the disparagement 
of English officers: they have had no means of acquiring 
experience. But I do say it to create alarm. We do not 
appear to me to be half alarmed enough, or to entertain that 
sense of our danger which leads to the most obvious means 
of self-defence. As for the spirit of the peasantry, in making 
a gallant defence behind hedgerows and through plate-racks 
and hencoops, highly as I think of their bravery, I do not 
know any nation in Europe so likely to be struck with panic 
as the English ; and this from their total unacquaintance wdth 
the science of w^ar. Old wheat and beans blazing for twenty 



56 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. 

miles round — cart-mares shot — sows of Lord Somerville's ^ 
breed rumiing wild over the country — the minister of the 
parish wounded sorely in his hinder parts — Mrs. Plymley in 
fits — all these scenes of war an Austrian or a Russian has 
seen three or four times over. But it is now three centuries 
since an English pig has fallen in fair battle upon English 
ground, or a farm-house been rifled. . . . But whatever was 
our conduct — if every ploughman was as great a hero as he 
who was called from his oxen to save Rome from her enemies 
— I should still say that, at such a crisis, you want the affec- 
tions of all your subjects in both islands. There is no spirit 
which you must alienate, no heart you must avert. Every 
man must feel he has a country, and that there is an urgent 
and pressing cause why he should ex]30se himself to death." 

Although Peter is so seriously concerned about the 
military disasters which will fall on England unless 
she behaves more wisely to her Koman Catholic popu- 
lation, he is not the least afraid of any dangers 
arising from the Roman Catholic religion. England 
has done with it, once for all. — 

" Tell me that the world will return again under the 
influence of the smallpox ; that Lord Castlereagh will here- 
after oppose the power of the court ; that Lord Howick and 
Mr. Grattan will each of them do a mean and dishonourable 
action ; that anybody who has heard Lord Redesdale speak 
will knowingly and willingly hear him again ; that Lord 
Eldon has assented to the fact of two and two making four, 
without shedding tears, or expressing the smallest doubt or 
scruple ; tell me any other thing absurd or incredible, but, for 
the love of common sense, let me hear no more of the danger 
to be apprehended from the general diffusion of Popery. It 
is too absurd to be reasoned upon ; every man feels it is non- 
sense when he hears it stated, and so does every man while 
he is stating it." 

1 John South ey, 15th Lord Somerville, President of the Board of 
Agriculture. 



III.] PETER PLYMLEY 57 

No, the only real danger whicli Peter sees — and 
this he sees with startling clearness — is that Ireland 
will be absorbed by France, and will welcome her 
deliverance from England ; that the civil existence of 
England will be most seriously imperilled ; and that 
the Irish themselves will, in the long-run, suffer 
grievously by the change. — 

"Who can doubt but that Ireland will experience ulti- 
mately from France a treatment to which the conduct they 
have experienced from England is the love of a parent or a 
brother? Who can doubt that, five years after he has got 
hold of the country, Ireland will be tossed by Bonaparte as 
a present to some one of his rufl&an generals, who will knock 
the head of Mr. Keogh against the head of Cardinal Troy, 
shoot twenty of the most noisy blockheads of the Roman 
persuasion, wash his pug-dogs in holy water, and confiscate 
the salt butter of the Milesian RepubUc to the last tub ? But 
what matters this? or who is wise enough in Ireland to heed 
it ? or when had common sense much influence with my poor 
dear Irish? Mr. Perceval does not know the Irish; but I 
know them, and I know that, at every rash and mad hazard, 
they will break the Union, revenge their wounded pride and 
their insulted religion, and fling themselves into the open 
arms of France, sure of dying in the embrace. ... In the six 
hundredth year of our Empire over Ireland, have we any 
memorial of ancient kindness to refer to ? any people, any zeal, 
any country, on which we can depend ? Have we any hope, 
but in the winds of heaven and the tides of the sea ? any 
prayer to prefer to the Irish, but that they should forget and 
forgive their oppressors, who, in the very moment that they 
are calling upon them for their exertions, solemnly assure 
them that the oppression shall still remain ? " 

Letter YL begins with one of those vivacious 
apologues in which Sydney Smith excelled. Abraham 
Plymley has been talking of the concessions which 
Koman Catholics have already received, and their 



68 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. 

shameless ingratitude in asking for more. To the cry 
of ingratitude Peter thus replies. — There is a village, 
he says, in which, once a year, the inhabitants sit 
down to a dinner provided at the common expense. 
A hundred years ago the inhabitants of three of the 
streets seized the inhabitants of the fourth street, 
bound them hand and foot, laid them on their backs, 
and compelled them to look on while the majority 
were stuffing themselves with beef and beer — and this, 
although they had contributed an equal quota to the 
expense. Next year the same assault was perpetrated. 
It soon grew into a custom ; and, as years went on, the 
village came to look on the annual act of tyranny as 
the most sacred of its institutions. Unfortunately, 
however, for the tyrannical majority, the inhabitants 
of the persecuted street increased in numbers, deter- 
mination, and public spirit. They murmured, protested, 
and resisted, till the oppressors, " more afraid of injus- 
tice, were now disposed to be just." On the next occasion 
of the annual dinner, the victims were unbound. The 
year after, they were allowed to sit upright. Then 
they got a bit of bread and a glass of water. Finally, 
after a long series of small concessions, they grew so 
bold as to ask that they might sit down at the bottom 
of the table, and feast with their grander neighbours. 
Forthwith, a general cry of shame and scandal. — 

"Ten years ago, were you not laid upon your backs? 
Don't you remember what a great thing you thought it to get 
a piece of bread ? How thankful you were for cheese-parings ? 
Have you forgotten that memorable sera, when the loi'd of the 
manor interfered to obtain for you a slice of the public 
pudding? And now, with an audacity only equalled by your 
ingratitude, you have the impudence to ask for knives and 



III.] PETER PLYMLEY 59 

forks, and to request, in terms too plain to be mistaken, that 
you may sit down to table with the rest, and be indulged 
even with beef and beer. There are not more than half a 
dozen dishes which we have reserved for ourselves ; the rest 
has been thrown open to you in the utmost profusion ; you 
have potatoes, and carrots, suet dumplings, sops in the pan, 
and delicious toast-and-water, in incredible quantities. Beef, 
mutton, lamb, pork, and veal are ours ; and, if you were not 
the most restless and dissatisfied of human beings, you would 
never think of aspiring to enjoy them." 

Is not this, says Peter, the very nonsense and the 
very insult which you daily practise on the Roman 
Catholics ? I, though I am an inhabitant of the village 
and live in one of the three favoured streets, have 
retained some sense of justice, and I most earnestly 
counsel these half -fed claimants to persevere in their 
just demands, till they are admitted to their just 
share of a dinner for which they pay as much as the 
others. 

" And, if they see a little attenuated lawyer ^ squabbling 
at the head of their opponents, let them desire him to empty 
his pockets, and to pull out all the pieces of duck, fowl, and 
pudding which he has filched from the public feasts, to carry 
home to his wife and children." 

Before ending his letter, Peter has a fling at the 
Home Secretary, Lord Hawkesbury, " the lesser of the 
two Jenkinsons." ^ Lord Hawkesbury has said that 
"nothing is to be granted to the Catholics from fear." 
Why not, asks Peter, if the thing demanded is just ? 

" The only true way to make the mass of mankind see the 
beauty of justice is by showing them in pretty plain terms the 

1 Spencer Perceval. 

2 Robert Bankes Jenkinson (1770-1820), 2nd Earl of Liverpool, 
was Lord Hawkesbury from 1796 to 1808. 



60 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. 

consequences of injustice. If any body of French troops land 
in Ireland, the whole population of that country will rise 
against you to a man, and you could not possibly survive such 
an event three years. Such, from the bottom of my heart, do 
I believe to be the present state of that country ; and so little 
does it appear to me to be impolitic and unstatesmanlike to 
concede anything to such a danger, that if the Catholics, in 
addition to their present just demands, were to petition for 
the perpetual removal of the said Lord Hawkesbury from his 
Majesty's councils, I think the prayer of the petition should 
be instantly complied with. Canning's crocodile tears should 
not move me ; the hoops of the Maids of Honour should not 
hide him. I would tear him from the banisters of the Back 
Stairs, and plunge him in the fishy fumes of the dirtiest of 
all his Cinque Ports." ^ 

Letter VII. begins with a rebuke to brother Abraham 
for placing all his hopes for the salvation of England 
in the " discretion " and " sound sense " of Mr. Secre- 
tary Canning. — 

" To call him a legislator, a reasoner, and the conductor of 
the affairs of a great nation, seems to me as absurd as if a 
butterfly were to teach bees to make honey. That he is an 
extraordinary writer of small poetry, and a diner-out of the 
highest lustre, I do most readily admit. . . . The Foreign 
Secretary is a gentleman — a respectable as well as a highly 
agreeable man in private life ; but you may as well feed me 
with decayed potatoes as console me for the miseries of Ire- 
land by the resources of his ' sense ' and his ' discretion.' It 
is only the public situation which this gentleman holds that 
entitles me or induces me to say so much about him. He is 
a fly in amber : nobody cares about the fly ; the only question 
is. How the devil did it get there ? Nor do I attack him from 
the love of glory, but from the love of utility, as a burgo- 
master hunts a rat in a Dutch dyke, for fear it should flood 
a province." 

1 Lord Hawkesbury was appointed Lord Warden of the Cinque 
Ports at a salary of £3000 a year. 



III.] PETER PLYMLEY 61 

Under the rule of Canning and his colleagueSj 
Ireland has become utterly disloyal. — 

" The great mass of the Catholic population, upon the 
slightest appearance of a French force in that country, would 
rise upon you to a man. There is no loyalty among the 
Catholics: they detest you as their worst oppressors, and 
they will continue to detest you till you remove the cause of 
their hatred. It is in your power in six months' time to 
produce a total revolution of opinions among these people. . . . 
At present see what a dreadf id state Ireland is in ! The 
common toast among the low Irish is, ' The Feast of the 
Pass-over.' Some allusion to Bonaparte, in a play lately 
acted at Dublin, produced thunders of applause from the pit 
and the gaUeries ; and a politician should not be inattentive 
to the public feelings expressed in theatres. Mr. Perceval 
thinks he has disarmed the Irish. He has no more disarmed 
the Irish than he has resigned a shilling of his own public 
emoluments. An Irish peasant fills the barrel of his gun full 
of tow dipped in oil, butters the lock, buries it in a bog, and 
allows the Orange bloodhound to ransack his cottage at 
pleasure. Be just and kind to the Irish, and you will indeed 
disarm them ; rescue them from the degraded servitude in 
which they are held by an handful of their own countrymen ; 
and you will add four millions of brave and affectionate men 
to your strength." 

But instead of these wise remedies, Mr. Secretary 
Canning only offers the Irish people his incessant, 
unseasonable, and sometimes indecent jokes. — 

" He jokes upon neutral flags and frauds, jokes upon Irish 
rebels, jokes upon northern and western and southern foes, 
and gives himself no trouble upon any subject. . . . And this 
is the Secretary whose genius, in the estimation of brother 
Abraham, is to extinguish the genius of Bonaparte. Pompey 
was killed by a slave, Goliath smitten by a stripling ; Pyrrhus 
died by the hand of a woman. Tremble, thou great Gaul, 
from whose head an armed Minerva leaps forth in the hour of 



62 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. 

danger; tremble, thou scourge of God, for a pleasant man is 
come out against thee, and thou shalt be laid low by a joker 
of jokes." 

Abraham comforts himself with his reflection that 
Bonaparte has no ships or sailors. But, says Peter, 
there are quite enough, remains of the navies of France, 
Spain, Holland, and Denmark, for such a short excur- 
sion as would be needed for the capture of Ireland. 
And Bonaparte can increase his forces every day. 
With all Europe at bis feet, he can get timber and 
stores and men to any conceivable amount. ^' He is at 
present the despotic monarch of above twenty thousand 
miles of sea-coast, and yet you suppose he cannot 
procure sailors for the invasion of Ireland." Ireland is 
still the burden of the song. Conciliate Ireland and all 
will be well. Tyrannize over her and we are undone. 

" If Ireland was friendly, we might equally set at defiance 
the talents of Bonaparte and the blunders of his rival Mr. 
Canning : we could then support the ruinous and silly bustle 
of our useless expeditions, and the almost incredible ignorance 
of our commercial Orders in Council.^ Let the present ad- 
ministration give up but this one point, and there is nothing 

1 "The allusion is to the Orders in Council under which Mr. 
Perceval endeavoured to retaliate on Napoleon's Baltic decree 
by regulating British trade with the Continent. Under these 
orders the exportation of all goods to France was prohibited 
which were not carried from this country and had not paid an 
export-duty here. But there were certain articles which the 
Minister decided that the Continent should have on no terms, 
and amongst others quinine, or Jesuit's Bark, as it was called. 
Sydney Smith, writing as Peter Plymley, said, 'You cannot 
seriously suppose the people to be so degraded as to look for 
their safety from a man who proposes to subdue Europe by 
keeping it without Jesuit's Bark. '" — Sib Spencer Walpole, 
Life of Lord John Russell. 



III.] PETER PLYMLEY 63 

■which I would not consent to grant them. Perceval should 
have full liberty to insult the tomb of Mr. Fox, and to torment 
every eminent Dissenter in Great Britain. Lord Camden 
should have large boxes of plums ; Mr. Rose receive permission 
to prefix to his name the appellation of Virtuous ; and to the 
Viscount Castlereagh a round sum of ready money shall be 
well and truly paid into his hand.^ Lastly, what remains to 
Mr. George Canning, but that he ride up and down Pall Mall 
glorious upon a white horse, and that they cry out before 
him, ' Thus shall it be done to the statesman who hath written 
The Needy Knife-Grinder^" 

Letter YIII. begins with the statistics of Ireland, 
its area, population, trade, manufactures, exports, and 
imports. " Ireland has the greatest possible facilities 
for carrying on commerce with the whole of Europe. 
It contains, within a circuit of 750 miles, ^Q secure 
harbours, and presents a western frontier against 
Great Britain, reaching from the Firth of Clyde north 
to the Bristol Channel south, and varying in distance 
from 20 to 100 miles; so that the subjugation of 
Ireland would compel us to guard with ships and 
soldiers a new line of coast, certainly amounting, with 
all its sinuosities, to more than 700 miles — an addition 
of polemics, in our present state of hostility with all 
the world, which must Mghly gratify the vigorists and 
give them an ample opportunity of displaying that 
foolish energy upon which their claims to distinction 
are founded. Such is the country which the Chan- 
cellor of the Exchequer would drive into the arms of 
France." 

Eeligious freedom, continues Peter, is the strongest 

1 In 1839 Sydney Smith pronounced this "a very unjust im- 
putation on Lord Castlereagh." Robert Stewart (1769-1823), 
Viscount Castlereagh, became Marquis of Londonderry in 1821. 



64 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. 

safeguard of states. France has it, and is victorious over 
Europe ; England lacks it, and is in imminent peril. 
" How sincerely and fervently have I often wished that 
the Emperor of the French had thought as Mr. Spencer 
Perceval does upon the subject of government ; that 
he had entertained doubts and scruples upon the pro- 
priety of admitting the Protestants to an equality of 
rights with the Catholics, and that he had left in the 
middle of his empire these vigorous seeds of hatred 
and disaffection. But the world was never yet 
conquered by a blockhead. One of the very first 
measures we saw him recurring to was the complete 
establishment of religious liberty. If his subjects 
fought and paid as he pleased, he allowed them to 
believe as they pleased. The moment I saw this, my 
best hopes were lost. I perceived in a moment the 
kind of man we had to do with. I was well aware of 
the miserable ignorance and folly of the country upon 
the subject of Toleration ; and every year has been 
adding to the success of that game which it was clear 
he had the will and the ability to play against us." 

Abraham has suggested that the Emperor is not a 
religious man, and that his tolerance is the fruit of 
indifference. But, says Peter, ^^if Bonaparte is liberal 
in subjects of religion because he has no religion, is 
this a reason why we should be illiberal because we 
are Christians ? If he owes this excellent quality to 
a vice, is that any reason why we may not owe it 
to a virtue ? Toleration is a great good, and a good 
to be imitated, let it come from whom it will." 

And now Peter turns upon Lord Sidmouth,^ who has 

1 Henry Addington (1757-1844), created Viscount Sidmouth 
in 1805. 



III.] PETER PLYMLEY - 65 

been prophesying woe and destruction from the emanci- 
pation of the Roman Catholics. Such prophecies, he 
says, will, in the process of time, become matter of 
pleasantry even to " the sedulous housewife and the 
Eural Dean.'' There is always a copious supply of 
Lord Sidmouths in the world, and they have always 
uttered the most dismal predictions about every im- 
provement in the lot of mankind. — 

" Turnpike roads, navigable canals, inoculation, hops, 
tobacco, the Reformation, the Revolution — there are always a 
set of worthy and moderately-gifted men who bawl out death 
and ruin upon every valuable change which the varying 
aspect of human affairs absolutely and imperiously requires." 

The only contention of poor Abraham which Peter 
will in the slightest degree accept, is that the emancipa- 
tion of the Roman Catholics will alienate the Orange- 
men. But, even if this be the result of a just act, it 
is far less formidable than the result of continued 
injustice. Brother Abraham, '• skilled in the arithmetic 
of Tithe," must perceive that it is better to have four 
friends and one enemy, than four enemies and one 
friend; and, the more violent the hatred of the 
Orangemen, the more certain the reconciliation of the 
Catholics. Even supposing, for the sake of argument, 
that the Orangemen carry their disaffection to the 
point of resistance, and brave the discipline of the 
law, the prospect has no terrors for Peter Plymley. — 

" My love of poetical justice does carry me as far as that — 
one summer's whipping, only one ; the thumb-screw for a 
short season; a little light, easy torturing between Lady 
Day and ]\Iichaelmas ; a short specimen of Mr. Perceval's 
rigour. I have malice enough to ask this slight atonement 
for the groans and shrieks of the poor Catholics, unheard by 



66 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. 

any human tribunal, but registered by the Angel of God 
against their Protestant and enlightened oppressors." 

Letter IX. opens with an enumeration of offices not 
tenable by adherents of the Eoman faith. 

" No Catholic can be chief Governor or Governor of this 
Kingdom, Chancellor or Keeper of the Great Seal, Lord High 
Treasurer, Chief of any of the Courts of Justice, Chancellor 
of the Exchequer, Puisne Judge, Judge in the Admiralty, 
Master of the Rolls, Secretary of State, Keeper of the Privy 
Seal, Vice-Treasurer or his Deputy, Teller or Cashier of 
Exchequer, Auditor or General, Governor or Custos Rotulorum 
of Counties, Chief Governor's Secretary, Privy Councillor, 
King's Counsel, Serjeant, Attorney, Solicitor-General, Master 
in Chancery, Provost or Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin, 
Postmaster-General, Master and Lieutenant-Gen eral of 
Ordnance, Commander-in-Chief, General on the Staff, Sheriff, 
Sub-Sheriff, Mayor, Bailiff, Recorder, Burgess, or any other 
officer in a City, or a Corporation. No Catholic can be 
guardian to a Protestant, and no priest guardian at all : no 
Catholic can be a gamekeeper, or have for sale, or otherwise, 
any arms or warlike stores ; no Catholic can present to a 
living, unless he choose to turn Jew in order to obtain that 
privilege ; and the pecuniary qualification of Catholic jurors 
is made higher than that of Protestants." 

Out of that splendid list of unattainable posts, Peter 
Plymley chooses, to illustrate his theme, the offices of 
Sheriff and Deputy-Sheriff in Ireland. No one, he 
says, who is unacquainted with that country, can 
conceive the obstacles to justice which exclusion from 
these offices entails. The lives, liberties, and properties 
of the Roman Catholic population are at the mercy of 
the Juries, and the Juries are nominated exclusively 
by Protestants — and this in a country where religious 
animosities are peculiarly inflamed. — 

"A poor Catholic in Ireland may be tried by twelve 



III.] PETER PLYMLEY " 67 

Percevals, and destroyed, according to the manner of that 
gentleman, in the name of the law, and with all the insulting 
forms of justice. I will not go the length of saying that 
deliberate and wilful injustice is done. I have no doubt 
that the Orange Deputy-Sheriff thinks it would be a most 
unpardonable breach of his duty if he did not summon a 
Protestant panel. I can easily believe that the Protestant 
panel may conduct themselves very conscientiously in hang- 
ing the gentlemen of the Crucifix; but I blame the law 
which does not guard the Catholic against the probable 
tenour of those feelings which must unconsciously influence 
the judgments of mankind. I detest that state of society 
which extends unequal degrees of protection to different 
creeds and persuasions; and I cannot describe to you the 
contempt I feel for a man who, calling himself a statesman, 
defends a system which fills the heart of every Irishman with 
treason." 

If then the Courts of Assize are, by the very nature 
of the case, instruments of injustice, it is the Grand 
Juries which are the great scene of Jobbery. They 
have the power of levying a county rate for roads, 
bridges, and other public accommodations. Milesian 
gentlemen, attendant on the Grand Inquest of Justice, 
arrange these little matters for their mutual con- 
venience. — 

"You suffer the road to be brought through my park, 
and I will have the bridge constructed in a situation where 
it will make a beautiful object to your house. You do my 
job, and I will do yours." 

And so, as far as the Protestant gentry are con- 
cerned, all is well. But there is a religion even in 
jobs; "and it will be highly gratifying to Mr. 
Perceval to learn that no man in Ireland who believes 
in Seven Sacraments can carry a public road, or 
bridge, one yard out of its way, and that nobody can 



68 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. 

cheat the public who does not expound the Scriptures 
in the purest and most orthodox manner. ... I ask 
if the human mind can experience a more dreadful 
sensation than to see its own jobs refused, and the 
jobs of another religion perpetually succeeding ? " 

And then again there is the grievance which consists 
in exclusion from the higher posts of the Professions. — 

" Look at human nature. Your boy Joel is to be brought 
up to the Bar: has Mrs. Plymley the slightest doubt of 
his being Chancellor? Do not his two shrivelled aunts live 
in the certainty of seeing him in that situation, and of cutting- 
out with their own hands his equity habiliments ? And I 
could name a certain Minister of the Gospel who does not, 
in the bottom of his heart, much differ from these opinions. 
Do you think that the fathers and mothers of the holy 
Catholic church are not as absurd as Protestant papas and 
mammas? The probability I admit to be, in each case, that 
the sweet little blockhead will in fact never get a brief. But 
I venture to say that there is not a parent from the Giant's 
Causeway to Bantry Bay, who does not conceive that his 
child is the unfortunate victim of the exclusion, and that 
nothing short of positive law could prevent his own dear, 
pre-eminent Paddy from rising to the highest honours of the 
State. So with the army, and Parliament. In fact, few are 
excluded ; but, in imagination, all. Y'ou keep twenty or 
thirty Catholics out, and lose the affections of four millions." 

And then Peter turns to the war-cry of No Popery, 
which had been so vigorously and successfully raised 
at the General Election of 1807, and derides the loyal 
indignation then directed against the Ministers who 
had the heart to worry George iii. with plans of 
redress for Koman Catholics. — 

" The general cry in the country was, that they 
would not see their beloved monarch used ill in his 
old age, and that they would stand by him to the 



III.] PETER PLYMLEY 69 

last drop of their blood.'' This ebullition of ill-judging 
loyalty reminds Peter of an accident which once befell 
the Eussian Ambassador in London. His Excellency 
fell down in a fit when paying a morning call. A 
doctor was summoned, who declared that the patient 
must be instantly bled ; and he prepared to perform 
the operation. "But the barbarous servants of the 
Embassy, when they saw the gleaming lancet, drew 
their swords, threw themselves into an attitude of 
defiance, and swore they would kill the man who 
dared to hurt their beloved master." 

Peter's own remedy for Irish disaffection was, first, 
to remove all civil penalties for religious faith, and 
then to subsidize the Eoman Catholic bishops and 
clergy in Ireland, and pay for the maintenance of their 
schools and churches. He calculated that this would 
cost £250,000 a year. The clergy should all receive 
their salaries through the Bank of Ireland; the 
salaries were to be proportioned to the size of the 
congregations ; and all patronage should be lodged in 
the hands of the Crown. — 

" Now I appeal to any human being, what the disaffection 
of a clergy would amount to, gaping after this graduated 
bounty of the Crown ; and whether Ignatius Loyola himself, 
if he were a living blockhead instead of a dead saint, could 
withstand the temptation of bouncing from £100 a year in 
Sligo, to £300 in Tipperary. This is the miserable sum of 
money for which the merchants, and landowners, and nobil- 
ity of England, are exposing themselves to the tremendous 
peril of losing Ireland." 

If all these schemes of conciliation were rejected as 
dangerous and impracticable, there remained of course 
the time-honoured remedy of Coercion. This had 



70 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. 

been demanded by Spencer Perceval, when attacking 
the conciliatory administration of " All the Talents," 
and it provoked Peter Plymley to a characteristic 
outburst : — 

" I cannot describe the horror and disgust which I felt at 
hearing Mr. Perceval call for measures of vigour in Ireland. 
If I lived at Hampstead ^ upon stewed meats and claret ; if I 
walked to church every Sunday morning before eleven young 
gentlemen of my own begetting, with their faces washed, and 
their hair pleasingly combed ; if the Almighty had blessed 
me with every earthly comfort — how awfully would I pause 
before I sent forth the flame and the sword over the cabins 
of the poor, brave, generous, open-hearted peasants of Ire- 
land ! How easy it is to shed human blood ! How easy it is 
to persuade ourselves that it is our duty to do so, and that the 
decision has cost us a severe struggle ! How much in all ages 
have wounds and shrieks and tears been the cheap and vul- 
gar resources of the rulers of mankind ! How difficult it is 
to govern in kindness, and to found an empire upon the 
everlasting basis of justice and affection ! " 

Letter X. begins with some observations on the 
Law of Tithe in Ireland. " I submit to your common 
sense, if it is possible to explain to an Irish peasant 
upon what principle of justice he is to pay every tenth 
potato in his little garden to a clergyman in whose 
religion nobody believes for twenty miles round him, 
and who has nothing to preach to but bare w^alls." 
Let the landowner pay the tithe, and charge the 
labourer a higher rent. This, Peter seems to think, 
will meet all the difficulties of the case, and yet not 
impoverish the Established clergy. And he is more 
than ever persuaded that the best way to check the 

1 Spencer Perceval had recently taken a villa on Hampstead 
Heath, for the benefit of his wife's health. 



III.] PETER PLYMLEY 71 

predominance of the Eoman Church in Ireland is to 
deliver the Romanists from every species of religious 
disability. On this theme Peter harps in a vein 
which, if he were a clergyman writing over his own 
name, would be justly described as cynical. — 

" If a rich young Catholic were in Parliament, he would 
belong to White's and to Brookes's ; would keep race-horses ; 
would walk up and down Pall Mall; be exonerated of his 
ready money and his constitution ; become as totally devoid 
of morality, honesty, knowledge, and civility, as Protestant 
loungers in Pall Mall; and return home with a supreme 
contempt for Father O'Leary and Father O'Callaghan. . . . 
The true receipt for preserving the Roman Catholic religion 
is Mr. Perceval's receipt for destroying it: it is to deprive 
every rich Catholic of all the objects of secular ambition, to 
separate him from the Protestants, and to shut him up in his 
castle with priests and relics." 

However sound this estimate of theological results 
may be, Abraham thinks that a period of universal war 
is not the proper time for innovations in the Constitu- 
tion. This, replies Peter, " is as much as to say that 
the worst time for making friends is the period when 
you have made many enemies ; that it is the greatest 
of all errors to stop when you are breathless, and to 
lie down when you are fatigued." 

Abraham, and those who think with him, hold that 
concession to Roman Catholics ought to be refused, 
if for no other reason, because King George iii. dis- 
likes it. This is an argument which Peter cannot 
away with. He respects the King as a good man, and 
holds that loyalty is one of the great instruments of 
English happiness. — 

" But the love of the King may easily become more strong 
than the love of the Kingdom, and we may lose sight of the 



72 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. 

public welfare in our exaggerated admiration of him who is 
appointed to reign only for its promotion and support. . . . 
God save the King, you say, warms your heart like the sound 
of a trumpet. 1 cannot make use of so violent a metaphor ; 
but I am delighted to hear it, when it is a cry of genuine 
affection : I am delighted to hear it when they hail not only 
the individual man, but the outward and living sign of all 
English blessings. These are noble feelings, and the heart of 
every good man must go with them ; but God save the King, 
in these times, too often means — God save my pension and 
my place, God give my sisters an allowance out of the Privy 
Purse — make me Clerk of the Irons, let me survey the 
Meltings, let me live upon the fruits of other men's industry, 
and fatten upon the plunder of the public." 

This brings us again to the "sepulchral Spencer 
Perceval," as he is called in another place, with his 
enormous emoluments from the public purse, his 
dream of pacifying Ireland by converting its in- 
habitants to Protestantism, and his fantastic policy of 
the Orders in Council. — 

" He would bring the French to reason by keeping them 
without rhubarb, and exhibit to mankind the awful spectacle 
of a nation deprived of neutral salts. This is not the dream 
of a wild apothecary indulging in his own opium ; this is not 
the distempered fancy of a pounder of drugs, delirious from 
smallness of profits — but it is the sober, deliberate, and 
systematic scheme of a man to whom the public safety is 
entrusted, and whose appointment is considered by many as a 
masterpiece of political sagacity." 

And now, having exhausted the " Catholic Question '^ 
as it presents itself in England and Ireland, Peter 
Plymley (who has already called attention to the 
religious liberty established in France) cites the cases 
of Switzerland and Hungary as illustrating the civil 



Ill] PETER PLYMLEY 73 

strength of nations free from tlie legalized animosities 
of religion. Did Frederick the Great ever refuse the 
services of a Catholic soldier? There is a Catholic 
Secretary of State at St. Petersburgh. There was a 
Greek Patriarch associated with a Vicar-Apostolic in 
the government of Venice. A Catholic Emperor has 
entrusted the command of his guard to a Protestant 
Prince. But what signifies all this to Spencer Per- 
ceval? He looks at human nature from the top of 
Hampstead Hill, and has not a thought beyond the 
sphere of his own vision. And so we reach the con- 
clusion of the whole matter. — 

" I now take a final leave of this subject of Ireland. The 
only difficulty in discussing it is a want of resistance — a want 
of something difficult to unravel and something dark to 
illumine. To agitate such a question is to beat the air with 
a club, and cut down gnats with a scimitar: it is a pros- 
titution of industry, and a waste of strength. If a man 
says, 'I have a good place, and I do not choose to lose it,* 
this mode of arguing upon the Catholic Question I can well 
understand. But that any human being with an understand- 
ing two degrees elevated above that of an Anabaptist preacher 
should conscientiously contend for the expediency and pro- 
priety of leaving the Irish Catholics in their present state, 
and of subjecting us to such tremendous peril in the present 
condition of the world, it is utterly out of my power to con- 
ceive. Such a measure as the Catholic Question is entirely 
beyond the common game of politics. It is a measure in 
which all parties ought to acquiesce, in order to preserve the 
place where and the stake for which they play. If Ireland is 
gone, where are jobs? where are reversions? where is my 
brother. Lord Arden ? i where are ' my dear and near re- 
lations ' ? The game is up, and the Speaker of the House of 

1 Spencer Perceval's elder brother, Charles George Perceval 
(17o6-18i0), was created Lord Ardeu in 1802. 



74 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. 

Commons will be sent as a present to the menagerie at Paris. 
We talk of waiting, as if centuries of joy and prosperity 
were before ns. In the next ten years our fate must be 
decided ; we shall know, long before that period, whether 
we can bear up against the miseries by which we are 
threatened, or not : and yet, in the very midst of our crisis, 
we are enjoined to abstain from the most certain means of 
increasing our strength, and advised to wait for the remedy 
till the disease is removed by death or health. And now, 
instead of the plain and manly policy of increasing unanimity 
at home, by equalizing rights and privileges, what is the 
ignorant, arrogant, and wicked system which has been pur- 
sued? Such a career of madness and of folly was, I believe, 
never run in so short a period. The vigour of the ministry is 
like the vigour of a grave-digger — the tomb becomes more 
ready and more wide for every effort which they make. . . . 
Every Englishman felt proud of the integrity of his country ; 
the character of the country is lost for ever. It is of the 
utmost consequence to a commercial people at war with 
the greatest part of Europe, that there should be a free 
entry of neutrals into the enemy's ports ; the neutrals who 
carried our manufactures we have not only excluded, but 
we have compelled them to declare war against us. It was 
our interest to make a good peace, or convince our own 
people that it could not be obtained; we have not made 
a peace, and we have convinced the people of nothing but 
of the arrogance of the Foreign Secretary : and all this has 
taken place in the short space of a year, because a King's 
Bench barrister and a writer of epigrams, turned into Ministers 
of State, were determined to show country gentlemen that the 
late administration had no vigour. In the mean time 
commerce stands still, manufactures perish, Ireland is more 
and more irritated, India is threatened, fresh taxes are 
accumulated upon the wretched people, the war is carried on 
without it being possible to conceive any one single object 
which a rational being can propose to himself by its continua- 
tion ; and in the midst of this unparalleled insanity we are 
told that the Continent is to be reconquered by the want of 



III.] PETER PLYMLEY 76 

rhubarb and plums. A better spirit than exists in the 
English people never existed in any people in the world ; 
it has been misdirected, and squandered upon party purposes 
in the most degrading and scandalous manner ; they have 
been led to believe that they were benefiting the commerce of 
England by destroying the commerce of America, that they 
were defending their Sovereign by perpetuating the bigoted 
oppression of their fellow-subjects; their rulers and their 
guides have told them that they would equal the vigour of 
France by equalling her atrocity; and they have gone on 
wasting that opulence, patience, and courage, which, if 
husbanded by prudent and moderate counsels, might have 
proved the salvation of mankind. The same policy of turn- 
ing the good qualities of Englishmen to their own destruc- 
tion, which made Mr. Pitt omnipotent, continues his power 
to those who resemble him only in his vices ; advantage is 
taken of the loyalty of Englishmen to make them meanly 
submissive ; their piety is turned into persecution, their cour- 
age into useless and obstinate contention ; they are plundered 
because they are ready to pay, and soothed into asinine stupid- 
ity because they are full of virtuous patience. If England 
must perish at last, so let it be ; that event is in the hands 
of God ; we must dry up our tears and submit. But, that 
England should perish swindling and stealing ; that it should 
perish waging war against lazar-houses and hospitals ; that 
it should perish persecuting with monastic bigotry ; that it 
should calmly give itself up to be ruined by the flashy arro- 
gance of one man, and the narrow fanaticism of another ; 
these events are within the power of human beings, and I 
did not think that the magnanimity of Englishmen would 
ever stoop to such degradations." 

So ends this vivid argument on behalf of political 
justice and social equality. Lord Grenville saw the 
resemblance to Swift, and Lord Holland kindly re- 
minded the anonymous satirist that " the only author 
to whom he could be compared in English, lost a bish- 
opric for his wittiest performance.'' In later years 



76 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. hi. 

Lord Murray ^ said, " After Pascal's Xe^^ers, it is the most 
instructive piece of wisdom in the form of Irony ever 
written." Macaulay declared that Sydney Smith was 
" universally admitted to have been a great reasoner, 
and the greatest master of ridicule that has appeared 
among us since Swift." Even now, after a century 
of publishing, Peter Plymley^s Letters retain their pre- 
eminence. The unexpurgated edition of the Apologia 
may rank with the Provincial Letters ; ^ but the creator 
of Peter and Abraham Plymley stands alone. 

1 John Archibald Murray (1779-1859), a Judge of the Court of 
Sessiou. 

2 In October 1844 Eugene Robin, reviewing Sydney Smith in the 
Revue des Deux Mondes, wrote as follows : — "Cache' sous le pseu- 
donyme de Peter Plymley il adresse ces uouvelles provinciales a 
un reverend pasteur, qui est bien le parfait modele de la sottise 
protestante, la quintessence des docteurs Bowles et des archidiacres 
Nares." 



CHAPTER lY 

FOSTON " PERSECUTIXG BISHOPS " BENCH AND BAR 

At the close of the eighteenth century and the begin- 
ning of the nineteenth, the most serious evil which 
beset the Church of England was the system of 
Pluralities and ISTon-Eesidence. A prosperous clergy- 
man might hold half-a-dozen separate preferments, and, 
as long as he paid curates to perform the irreducible 
minimum of public duty, he need never show his face 
inside his deserted parishes. The ecclesiastical litera- 
ture of the time abounds in quaint illustrations of 
the equanimity with which this system, and all its 
attendant evils, was regarded even by respectable and 
conscientious men. Thomas ]S"ewton, the commentator 
on Prophecy, was Dean of St. Paul's as well as Bishop 
of Bristol, and, before he became a bishop, held a 
living in the City, a Prebend of Westminster, the 
Precentorship of York, the Lectureship of St. George's, 
Hanover Square, and "the genteel office of Sub- 
Almoner." Richard Watson (who is believed never 
to have set foot in his diocese) was Bishop of Llandaff 
and Archdeacon of Ely, and drew the tithes of sixteen 
parishes. William Van Mildert, afterwards Bishop of 
Durham, was Rector of St. Mary-le-Bow, Cheapside, 
and also held the living of Farningham, near Seven- 
oaks, "as an agreeable retreat within a convenient 

77 



78 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. 

distance from town." Eichard Valpy was Head 
Master of Reading School, and Kector of Stradishall 
in Suffolk. George Butler, afterwards Dean of Peter- 
borough, was Head Master of Harrow and Eector of 
Gay ton in Northamptonshire. Nearly every bishop 
had a living together with his see. The valuable 
Eectory of Stanhope in Durham was held by four 
successive bishops. Henry Courtenay, Bishop of 
Exeter, was Eector of St. George's, Hanover Square. 
George Pelham, Bisho]^ of Exeter, had a living in 
Sussex, and Christopher Bethell, Bishop of Exeter, 
had a living in Yorkshire. 

When Sydney Smith was appointed to the rectory 
of Foston, there had been no resident Eector since 
the reign of Charles ii. The churches of non-resident 
Eectors were commonly served by what were called 
" galloping parsons,'^ who rattled through the services 
required by law, riding at full speed from parish to 
parish, so as to serve perhaps three churches on one 
Sunday. In many places the Holy Communion was 
celebrated only three times a year. At Alderley, 
before Edward Stanley, afterwards Bishop of Norwich, 
became Eector there, "the clerk used to go to the 
churchyard stile to see whether there were any more 
coming to church, for there were seldom enough to 
make a congregation. The former Eector used to 
boast that he had never set foot in a sick person's 
cottage.'' When the shepherds thus deserted and 
starved their flocks, it was only natural that the 
sheep betook themselves to every form of schism, irre- 
ligion, and immorality. To remedy these evils, Spencer 
Perceval, whose keen interest in the affairs of the 
Church had a curiously irritating effect on Sydney 



IV.] rOSTON 79 

Smith, took in hand to pass the Clergy Eesidence 
Bill, and the Bill became an Act in 1803. In 1808 
a new Archbishop^ was enthroned at York. He 
immediately began to put the Act in force, and 
summoned Sydney Smith from the joys of London 
to the austerities of Foston-le-Clay. The choice lay 
between complying and resigning, for no exchange of 
livings seemed practicable. On the 8th of October 
1808, Sydney wrote to Lady Holland — "My lot is 
now cast, and my heritage fixed — most probabl}^ 
But you may choose to make me a bishop, and, if you 
do, I think I shall never do you discredit ; for I be- 
lieve it is out of the power of lawn and velvet, and 
the crisp hair of dead men fashioned into a wig,^ to 
make me a dishonest man." 

Two months later he wrote — "I have bought a 
book about drilling beans, and a greyhound puppy for 
the Malton Meeting. It is thought I shall be an emi- 
nent rural character." The expense of removing his 
family and furniture from London to Yorkshire was 
considerable, so he published two volumes of sermons 
and paid for the journey with the £200 which he 
received for them. The rectory-house at Foston was 
ruinous and uninhabitable, and it was necessary to 
rebuild it. Meanwhile the Eector hired a house some 
way off, in the village of Heslington, and there he es- 
tablished himself on the 21st of June 1809, " two hun- 
dred miles," as he ruefully remarked, " from London." 

1 Edward Vemon, afterwards Harcourt (1757-1847). 

2 Charles James Blomfield (1786-1857), Bishop of London, was 
the first bishop to discard the episcopal wig; and John Bird 
Sumner (1780-1862), Archbishop of Canterbury, the last to 
wear it. 



80 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. 

Three days later he wrote to Lady Holland that he 
had laid down two rules for his own guidance in the 
country : — 

" 1. Not to smite the partridge ; for, if I fed the poor, and 
comforted the sick, and instructed the ignorant, yet I should 
be nothing worth, if I smote the partridge. If anything ever 
endangers the Church, it will be the strong propensity to 
shooting for which the clergy are remarkable. Ten thousand 
good shots dispersed over the country do more harm to the 
cause of religion than the arguments of Voltaire and Rou sseau.i 

" 2. I mean to come to town once a year, though of that, 
I suppose, I shall soon be weary, finding my mind growing 
weaker and weaker, and my acquaintances gradually falling 
off. I shall by this time have taken myself again to shy 
tricks, pull about my watch-chain, and become (as I was 
before) your abomination. . . . Mrs. Sydney is all rural 
bustle, impatient for the parturition of hens and pigs ; I 
wait patiently, knowing all will come in due season." 

To Jeffrey he wrote on the 3rd of September : — 

" Instead of being unamused by trifles, I am, as I well 
knew I should be, amused by them a great deal too much. 
I feel an ungovernable interest about my horses, my pigs, and 
my plants. I am forced, and always was forced, to task my- 
self up into an interest for any higher objects." 

Six days later he wrote to Lady Holland : — 

" I hear you laugh at me for being happy in the country, 
and upon this I have a few words to say. In the first place, 
whether one lives or dies I hold, and have always held, to be 
of infinitely less moment than is generally supposed. But, if 
life is to be, then it is common sense to amuse yourself with 
the best you can find where you happen to be placed. I am 
not leading precisely the life I should choose, but that which 

1 In later life he said : — "If you shoot, the squire and the 
poacher both consider you as their natural enemies, and I thought 
it more clerical to be at peace with both." 



IV.] rOSTON ' 81 

(all things considered, as well as I could consider them) 
appeared to me to be the most eligible. I am resolved, 
therefore, to like it, and to reconcile myself to it ; which is 
more manly than to feign myself above it, and to send up 
complaints by the post, of being thrown away, and being 
desolate, and such-like trash. I am prepared, therefore, either 
way. If the chances of life ever enable me to emerge, I will 
show you that I have not been wholly occupied by small and 
sordid pursuits. If (as the greater probability) I am come 
to the end of my career, I give myself quietly up to horticul- 
ture, etc. In short, if it be my lot to crawl, I will crawl con- 
tentedly ; if to fly, I will fly with alacrity ; but, as long as I 
can possibly avoid it, I will never be unhappy. If, with a 
pleasant wife, three children, and many friends who wish me 
well, I cannot be happy, I am a very silly, foolish fellow, and 
what becomes of me is of very little consequence." 

If ample occupation be, as some strenuous moralists 
assertj the true secret of happiness, Sydney Smith had 
plenty to make him happy during the early years of 
his life in Yorkshire. Here is his own account of his 
translation : — 

" A diner-out, a wit, and a popular preacher, I was sud- 
denly caught up by the Archbishop of York, and transported 
to my living in Yorkshire, where there had not been a resi- 
dent clergyman for a hundred and fifty years. Fresh from 
London, and not knowing a turnip from a carrot, I was com- 
pelled to farm three hundred acres, and without capital to 
build a Parsonage House." 

He was his own architect, his own builder, and his 
own clerk of the works. The cost of building a house, 
with borrow^ed money, made him a very poor man for 
several years. 

" I turned schoolmaster, to educate my son, as I could not 
ajfford to send him to school. Mrs. Sydney turned school- 
mistress, to educate my girls, as I could not afford a gov- 



82 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. 

erness. I turned farmer, as I could not let my land. . . . 
Added to all these domestic cares, I was village parson, vil- 
lage doctor, village comforter, village magistrate, and Edin- 
burgh Reviewer; so you see I had not much time on my 
hands to regret London." 

Every one has heard of " Bunch/' the " little garden- 
girl, shaped like a milestone/' who " became the best 
butler in the county " ; of the gaunt riding-horse 
"Calamity/' which, "flung me over his head into a 
neighbouring parish, as if I had been a shuttlecock, 
and I felt grateful that it was not into a neighbouring 
planet " ; and of the ancient carriage called " the Im- 
mortal," which was so well known on the road that 
"the village-boys cheered it and the village-dogs 
barked at it" — and surely remembrance should be 
made, amid this goodly caravan, of the four draught- 
oxen, Tug and Lug, Haul and Crawl, even though 
" Tug and Lug took to fainting, and required buckets 
of salvolatile, and Haul and Crawl to lie down in the 
mud." 

When Sydney Smith says that he was "village 
doctor," he reminds us of his lifelong fancy for dab- 
bling in medicine. When his daughter, not six 
months old, was attacked by croup, he gave her in 
twenty-four hours " 32 grains of calomel, besides bleed- 
ing, blistering, and emetics." When he was called 
to baptize a sick baby, he seized the opportunity of 
giving it a dose of castor oil. One day he writes — 

" I am performing miracles in my parish with garhc for 
whooping-co ugh. " 

Another : — 

" We conquered the whooping-cough here with a penny- 
worth of salt of tartar, after having filled them with the 



IV.] FOSTON 83 

expensive poisons of Halford.^ What an odd thing that 
such a specific should not be more known ! " 

" I attended two of my children through a good stout fever 
of the typhus kind without ever calling in an apothecary, 
but for one day. I depended upon blessed antimony, and 
watched anxiously for the time of giving bark." 

"Douglas 2 alarmed us the other night with the Croup. 
I darted into him all the mineral and vegetable resources 
of my shop, cravatted his throat with blisters and fringed 
it with leeches, and set him in five or six hours to playing 
marbles, breathing gently and inaudibly." 

After an unbealthy winter he writes : — 

" Our evils have been want of water, and scarlet-fever in 
our village ; where, in three quarters of a year, we have buried 
fifteen, instead of one per annum. You will naturally sup- 
pose I have killed all these people by doctoring them ; but 
scarlet-fever awes me, and is above my aim. I leave it to 
the professional and graduated homicides." ^ 

In this connexion it is natural to cite the lines on 
" The Poetical Medicine Chest," " which Mr. Stuart 
Eeid has printed. They contain some excellent advice 
about the drugs which a mother should provide for the 
use of a young family, and end, majestically, thus: — 

" Spare not in Eastern blasts, when babies die, 
The wholesome rigour of the Spanish Fly. 
From timely torture seek thy infant's rest, 
And spread the poison on his labouring breast. 
And so, fair lady, when in evil hour 
Less prudent mothers mourn some faded flower, 
Six Howards valiant, and six Howards fair 
Shall live, and love thee, and reward thy care." 

1 Sir Henry Halford, Bart., M.D. (1766-1844). 

2 His eldest son. 

3 Compare — *' The Sixth Commandment is suspended, by one 
medical diploma, from the North of England to the South." — 
Essay on " Persecuting Bishops." 

4 Addressed to Mrs. Henry Howard. 



84 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. 

But parochial and domestic concerns could not 
altogether divert Sydney Smith's mind from the 
strife of politics. He watched the turmoil from afar. 
On the 1st of January 1813, he wrote to his friend 
John Allen, who was more sanguine than himself about 
the prospects of the Whigs : — 

" Everything is fast setting in for arbitrary power. The 
Court will grow bolder and bolder, a struggle will commence, 
and, if it ends as I wish, there will be Whigs again. . . . But 
when these things come to pass, you will no longer be a 
Warden,! but a brown and impalpable powder in the tombs 
of Dulwich. In the meantime, enough of liberty will remain 
to make our old-age tolerably comfortable ; and to your last 
gasp you will remain in the perennial and pleasing delusion 
that the Whigs are coming in, and will expire mistaking the 
officiating clergyman for a King's Messenger." 

While the new Eectory House at Foston was build- 
ing, the Rector was wholly engrossed in the work. " I 
live,'' he wrote, "trowel in hand. My whole soul is 
filled up by lath and plaster. He laid the foundation- 
stone in June 1813, and took possession of the com- 
pleted edifice in March 1814. "My house was 
considered the ugliest in the county, but all admitted 
that it was one of the most comfortable." ^ It remains 
to the present day pretty much as Sydney Smith 
left it. A room on the ground-floor, next to the 
drawing-room, served the threefold purposes of study, 
dispensary, and justice-room. As a rule, he wrote 
his sermons and his articles for the Edinburgh in 
the drawing-room, not heeding the conversation of 
family and visitors ; but in the " study " he dosed 

1 John Allen (1771-1843) was Warden of Dulwich College. 

2 Macaulay called it " the very neatest, most commodious, and 
most appropriate rectory that I ever saw." 



IV.] rOSTON 85 

his parishioners; and here, having been made a 
Justice of the Peace, he administered mercy to 
poachers. He hated the Game-Laws as they stood, 
and it stirred his honest wrath to reflect that "for 
every ten pheasants which fluttered in the wood, one 
English peasant was rotting in gaol." So strong was 
his belief in the contaminating effects of a prisoner's 
life that he never, if he could help it, would commit 
a boy or girl to gaol. He sought permission to accom- 
pany Mrs. Fry on one of her visits to Newgate, and 
spoke of her ministry there as "the most solemn, the 
most Christian, the most affecting, which any human 
eye ever witnessed." ^ A pleasing trait of his in- 
cumbency at Foston was the creation of allotment- 
gardens for the poor. He divided several acres of the 
glebe into sixteenths, and let them, at a low rent, to 
the villagers. Each allotment was just big enough to 
supply a cottage with potatoes, and to support a pig. 
Cheap food for the poor was another of his excellent 
hobbies. His Common-Place Book contains receipts 
for nourishing soups made of rice and peas and 
flavoured with ox-cheek. He notes that more than 
thirty people were comfortably fed with these con- 
coctions at a penny a head. After a bad harvest he 
and his family lived, like the labourers round them, on 
unleavened cakes made from the damaged flour of the 
sprouted wheat. His daughter writes — " The luxury 
of returning to bread again can hardly be imagined by 
those who have never been deprived of it." 

1 In 1818 he writes to Lady Mary Bennet : — "I am glad you 
liked what I said of Mrs. Fry. She is very unpopular with the 
clergy: examples of living, active virtue disturb our repose, and 
give birth to distressing comparisons: we long to burn her alive." 



86 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. 

But, in spite of occasional difficulties of this descrip- 
tion, which were always faced and overcome with in- 
vincible good-humour, Sydney Smith's fifteen years 
at Foston were happily and profitably spent. He was 
in the fulness of his physical and intellectual vigour. 
He said of himself, " I am a rough writer of Sermons," 
but his energy in delivering them awoke the admira- 
tion of his sturdy flock. — 

" When I began to thump the cushion of my pulpit, on first 
coming to Foston, as is my wont when I preach, the accumu- 
lated dust of a hundred and fifty years made such a cloud, 
that for some minutes I lost sight of my congregation." ^ 

His Bible-class for boys was affectionately remembered 
sixty years afterwards.^ By his constant contributions 
to the Edinburgh, he was both helping forward the great 
causes in which he most earnestly believed, and estab- 
lishing his own fame. Good health, cheerfulness, and 
contentment reigned in the Rectory, which might well 
have been called "A Temple of Industrious Peace." ^ 

In spite of some small irregularities and oddities in 
the furniture of the house and the arrangements of the 
establishment — all of which the Rector habitually and 
humorously exaggerated — the Rectory was an ex- 
tremely comfortable home. It was so constructed as 
to be full of air, light, and warmth. The Rector said 
of it : — 

"We are about equal to a second-rate inn, as Mrs. Sydney 
says; but I think myself we are equal to any inn on the 
North Road, except Ferrybridge." 

1 Macaulay describes Foston Church as " a miserable little hovel 
with a wooden belfry." 

2 As testified by Mr. Stuart Reid. 

8 Carlyle's description of Dr. Arnold's house at Rugby. 



IV.] FOSTON 87 

The larder of this " second-rate inn " was pleasantly 
supplied by the kindness of faithful friends. 

"I am very much obliged to you for sending me the 
pheasants. One of my numerous infirmities is a love of eat- 
ing pheasants." — " Many thanks for two fine Gallicia hams ; 
but, as for boiling them in wine, I am not as yet high enough 
in the Church for that ; so they must do the best they can in 
water." — " Lord Tankerville has sent me a whole buck ; this 
necessarily takes up a good deal of my time. Venison is an 
interesting subject, which is deemed among the clergy a 
professional one." — " Your grouse are not come by this day's 
mail, but I suppose they will come to-morrow. Even the 
rumour of grouse is agreeable." — " Lord Lauderdale has sent 
me two hundred and thirty pounds of salt fish." — " You have 
no idea what a number of handsome things were said of you 
when your six partridges were consumed to-day. Wit, lit- 
erature, and polished manners were ascribed to you — some 
good quality for each bird." — " What is real piety? What 
is true attachment to the Church? How are these fine feel- 
ings best evinced? The answer is plain — by sending straw- 
berries to a clergyman. Many thanks." 

To the hostelry, thus well victualled, and called by 
its owner "The Eector's Head," many interesting 
visitors found their way. Lord and Lady Holland, 
Miss Fox, Miss Vernon, Sir James Mackintosh, Sir 
Humphry Davy, Samuel Rogers, Dr. and Mrs. Marcet, 
and Francis Jeffrey were among the earliest guests. 
<^Mrs. Sydney was dreadfully alarmed about her 
side-dishes the first time Luttrell ^ paid us a visit, and 
grew pale as the covers were lifted; but they stood 
the test. Luttrell tasted and praised." 

The neighbours of whom the Smiths saw most 
were Lord and Lady Carlisle,^ who drove over from 

1 Henry Luttrell (1765-1835), wit and epicure. 

2 Frederick, 5th Earl of Carlisle (1748-1825) married Lady 
Margaret Caroline Leveson-Gower. 



88 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. 

Castle Howard ^ in a coach-and-fonr with outriders, and 
were upset in a ploughed field ; their son and daughter- 
in-law, Lord and Lady Georgiana Morpeth, wdio with 
their children made "no mean part of the population 
of Yorkshire '' ; and the Archbishop of York, who 
became one of the Smiths' kindest and most faithful 
friends. Every year Sydney paid a visit to London, 
receiving the warmest of welcomes from all his old 
associates. In 1821 he revisited his friends at Edin- 
burgh, and going or coming he visited Lord Grey 
at Howick, Lord Tankerville at Chillingham, Lord 
Lauderdale at Dunbar, and Mr. Lambton, afterwards 
Lord Durham, at Lambton. At Chillingham he duly 
admired the beef supplied by the famous herd of wild 
cattle, but he admired still more the magnificent 
novelty of gas at Lambton. — 

" What use of wealth so luxurious and delightful as to light 
your house with gas? What folly to have a diamond neck- 
lace or a Correggio, and not to light your house with gas ! 
The splendour and glory of Lambton Hall make all other 
houses mean. How pitiful to submit to a farthing-candle 
existence, when science puts such intense gratification within 
your reach ! Dear lady, spend all your fortune in a gas- 
apparatus. Better to eat dry bread by the splendour of gas, 
than to dine on wild beef with wax candles 1 " 

Another friend whom the Smiths visited regularly 
was Mr., afterwards Sir George, Philips, an opulent 
cotton-spinner of Manchester. Once, when staying 
with Philips, Sydney undertook to preach a Charity 
Sermon in Prestwich Church, and with reference to 
this he wrote in the previous week : " I desire to make 

1 In old age Sydney Smith wrote — "Castle Howard befriended 
me when I wanted friends : I shall never forget it till I forget 
all." 



IV.] rOSTON 89 

three or four hundred weavers cry, whicli it is ini- 
possible to do since the late rise in cottons/' 
Writing from Philips's house in 1820 he says : — 

" Phihps doubles his capital twice a week. We talk much 
of cotton, more of the fine arts, as he has lately returned from 
Italy, and purchased some pictures which were sent out from 
Piccadilly on purpose to intercept him." 

His daughter tells us that, during these years of 
small income and large expenses, her father never 
bought any books. He had brought a small but service- 
able library with him from London, and his friends 
made additions to it from time to time. He wrote to 
a friend in 1810 : — 

"I have read, since I saw you, Burke's works, some books 
of Homer, Suetonius, a great deal of agricultural reading, God- 
win's Enquirer, and a great deal of Adam Smith. As I have 
scarcely looked at a book for five years, I am rather hungry." 

Here are some of the plans which, year by year, he 
laid down for the regulation of his studies : — 

" Translate every day ten lines of the De Officiis, and 
re-translate into Latin. Five chapters of Greek Testament. 
Theological studies. Plato's Apology for Socrates; Horace's 
Epochs, Epistles, Satires, and Ars Poetica." 

" Write sermons and reviews, Monday, Wednesday, and 
Friday. Pead, Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday. Write ten 
lines of Latin on writing days. Read five chapters of Greek 
Testament on reading days. For morning reading, either 
Polybius, or Diodorus Siculus, or some tracts of Xenophon 
or Plato ; and for Latin, Catullus, Tibullus, and Propertius. 

" Monday : write, morning ; read Tasso, evening. Tuesday : 
Latin or Greek, morning; evening, theology. Wednesday, 
same as Monday. Friday, ditto. Thursday and Saturday, 
same as Tuesday. Read every day a chapter in Greek 
Testament, and translate ten lines of Latin. Good books to 



90 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. 

read : — Terrasson's History of Roman Jurisprudence ; Bishop 
of Chester's Records of the Creation." 

His daughter says that he read with great rapidity. 
"He galloped through the pages so rapidly that we 
often laughed at him when he shut up a thick quarto 
as his morning's work. ^ Cross-examine me, then/ he 
said; and we generally found that he knew all that 
was worth knowing in it." Here, obviously, is the 
stuff out of which reviewers are made, and this was 
the very zenith of Sydney Smith's power and useful- 
ness in the Edinburgh Review. 

He wrote as quickly as he read. When once he 
had amassed the necessary facts, he sate down amid all 
the distracting sights and sounds of a drawing-room 
crowded with femininity, and wrote at full speed, 
without deliberations, embellishments, or erasures; 
only betraying by the movements of his expressive 
face his amusement and interest " as fresh images came 
clustering round his pen." As soon as the essay was 
finished, he would throw it on the table, saying to his 
wife, "There, Kate, just look it over — dot the I's and 
cross the ^'s '^ ; and went out for his walk. It should 
be added that his writing was singularly difficult to 
read, that he was very infirm about spelling proper 
names, and that he was exceptionally careless in 
correcting his proofs. 

Of those essays which he subsequently reprinted, as 
judging them most worthy of preservation, I see that 
by 1821 he had written fifty. Among these were such 
masterpieces of humour and argument as " Edge worth 
on Bulls," " Methodism," " Indian Missions," " Hannah 
More," "Public Schools," "America," "Game-Laws" 
and "Botany Bay." On the 19th of May 1820, he 



IV.] "PERSECUTING BISHOPS" 91 

wrote, "I found in London both my articles very 
popular — upon the Poor-Laws and America. The pas- 
sage on Taxation had great success.'^ ^ Some of these 
papers will be considered separately, when we come to 
discuss his style and his opinions ; but space must 
here be found for an unrivalled specimen of his contro- 
versial method, which belongs to the year 1822. It is 
called "Persecuting Bishops." "Is Bishops in that 
title a nominative or an accusative ? '' grimly inquired a 
living prelate, when the present writer was extolling the 
essay so named. It is a nominative ; and perhaps the 
exacter title would have been " A Persecuting Bishop." 
Herbert Marsh ^ was Second Wrangler in 1779, 
Fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge, Margaret 
Professor of Divinity, Bishop of Llandaff from 1816 
to 1819, and of Peterborough from 1819 till his death. 
He was a "High Churchman of the old school" — 
perhaps the most unpleasant type of theologian in 
Christendom. We know, from the Life of Father 
" Ignatius " Spencer,^ that Bishop Marsh played whist 
with his candidates for Orders on the eve of the ordi- 
nation, and all that we read about him beautifully 
illustrates that tone of "quiet worldliness" which 
Dean Church described as the characteristic of the 
English clergy in the earlier part of the nineteenth 
century. But what he lacked in personal devotion he 
made up (as some have done since his day) by furious 
hostility to spiritual and religious enthusiasm in 
others. He opposed the civil claims alike of Roman 
Catholics and of Dissenters. He attacked the Bible 
Society. He denounced Charles Simeon. He insulted 

1 See Appendix B. 2 (1757-1839). 

8 The Hon. and Rev. George Spencer (1799-1864). 



92 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. 

Isaac Milner ; and lie determined to purge his diocese 
of Evangelicalism (which, oddly enough, he seems to 
have identified with Calvinism). His manly resolve 
to stifle religious earnestness culminated in the year 
1820, when he drew up a set of eighty-seven questions, 
which he proposed to every candidate for Orders, and 
to every clergyman who sought his license to officiate. 
Failure to answer these questions to the Bishop's sat- 
isfaction was to be punished by exclusion from the 
diocese of Peterborough. Happily, the Evangelical 
clergy of that period was very little disposed to sit 
down under Episcopal tyranny. The Bishop's set 
of questions was met by a hailstorm of pamphlets. 
Petitions for redress were poured into the House of 
Lords. The Bishop was forced into the open, and 
constrained to make the best defence he could in a 
published speech. In November 1822, Sydney Smith, 
in the Edinburgh Review, came to the assistance of his 
brother-clergy against the high-handed tyranny of the 
Persecuting Bishop. 

The reviewer begins by giving the Bishop credit for 
good intentions ; but maintains that his conduct has 
been — 

*' singularly injudicious, extremely harsh, and in its effects 
(though not in its intentions) very oppressive and vexatious 
to the clergy. . . . We cannot believe that we are doing 
wrong in ranging ourselves on the weaker side, in the cause 
of propriety and justice. The Mitre protects its wearer from 
indignity; but it does not secure impunity." 

After this preface Sydney Smith goes on to develop 
his argument against the Bishop, and he starts with 
the highly reasonable proposition that a man is pre- 
sumably wrong when all his friends, whose habits and 



IV.] "PERSECUTING BISHOPS" 93 

interests would naturally lead them to side with him, 
think him wrong. — 

"If a man were to indulge in taking medicine till the 
apothecary, the druggist, and the physician all called upon 
him to abandon his philocathartic propensities — if he were to 
gratify his convivial habits till the landlord demurred and the 
waiter shook his head — we should naturally imagine that 
advice so disinterested was not given before it was wanted." 

The Bishop of Peterborough has all his brother- 
bishops against him, though they certainly love power 
as well as he. Not one will defend him in debate ; 
not one will allege that he has acted or would act as 
Peterborough has acted. 

Then, again, the bishop who refuses to license a 
curate unless he satisfactorily answers Eighty-Seven 
Questions, thereby puts himself in opposition to the 
bishop who ordained the curate. One standard of 
orthodoxy is established in one diocese; another in 
another. The theological system of the Church 
becomes local and arbitrary instead of national and 
fixed. — 

" If a man is a captain in the army in one part of England, 
he is a captain in all. The general who commands north 
of the Tweed does not say, ' You shall never appear in my 
district, or exercise the functions of an officer, if you do not 
answer eighty-seven questions on the art of war, according to 
my notions.' The same officer who commands a ship of the 
line in the Mediterranean is considered as equal to the same 
office in the North Seas. The Sixth Commandment is sus- 
pended by one medical diploma from, the North of England to 
the South. '^ But, by the new system of interrogation, a man 
maybe admitted into Orders at Barnet, rejected at Stevenage, 
readmitted at Buckden, kicked out as a Calvinist at Witham 

1 See p. 83. 



94 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. 

Common, and hailed as an ardent Arminian on his arrival 
at York." 

The Bishop's reply to the charges brought against 
him evinces surprise that any one should have the 
hardihood to criticize or to resist him; and yet, the 
reviewer asks, to what purpose has he read his eccle- 
siastical history, if he expects anything except the 
most strenuous opposition to his tyranny? — 

" Does he think that every sturdy Supralapsarian bullock 
whom he tries to sacrifice to the Genius of Orthodoxy will 
not kick, and push, and toss; that he will not, if he can, 
shake the axe from his neck, and hurl his mitred butcher into 
the air? We know these men fully as well as the Bishop; 
he has not a chance of success against them. They will 
ravage, roar, and rush till the very chaplains, and the Masters 
and Misses Peterborough, request his lordship to desist. He 
is raising a storm in the English Church of which he has not 
the slightest conception, and which will end, as it ought to 
end, in his lordship's disgrace and defeat." 

Then the reviewer goes on to urge that discretion 
and common sense, good nature and good manners, 
are qualities far more valuable in bishops than any 
"vigilance of inquisition." Prelates of the type of 
Bishop Marsh are the most dangerous enemies of the 
Establishment which they profess to serve. — 

" Six such Bishops, multiplied by eighty-seven, and working 
with five hundred and twenty-two questions, would fetch 
everything to the ground in six months. But what if it 
pleased Divine Providence to afflict every prelate with the 
spirit of putting eighty-seven questions, and the two Arch- 
bishops with the spirit of putting twice as many, and the 
Bishop of Sodor and Man with the spirit of putting forty-three 
questions ? There would then be a grand total of two thousand 
three hundred and thirty-five interrogations flying about the 



IV.] "PERSECUTING BISHOPS" 95 

English Church, and sorely vexed would be the land with 
Question and Answer. ... If eighty-seven questions are 
assumed to be necessary by one bishop, eight hundred may 
be considered as the minimum of interrogation by another. 
When once the ancient faith-marks of the Church are lost 
sight of and despised, any misled theologian may launch out 
on the boundless sea of polemical vexation." 

The Bishop's main line of defence, when challenged 
in the House of Lords, was that he had a legal right 
to do what he had done. This was not disputed. " A 
man may persevere in doing what he has a right to 
do till the Chancellor shuts him up in Bedlam, or till 
the mob pelts him as he passes." But the reviewer 
reminds him that he has no similar right as against 
clergymen presented to benefices in his diocese. They 
are protected by the patron's action of Quare Impedit ; 
and all considerations of honour, decency, and common 
sense should restrain the Bishop from " letting himself 
loose against the working man of God," and enforcing 
against the curate a system of inquisition which he 
dare not apply to the incumbent. — 

" Prelates are fond of talking about my see, my clergy, my 
diocese, as if these things belonged to them as their pigs and 
dogs belonged to them. They forget that the clergy, the 
diocese, and the bishops themselves, all exist only for the 
public good ; that the public are a third and principal party 
in the whole concern. It is not simply the tormenting bishop 
against the tormented curate; but the public against the 
system of tormenting, as tending to bring scandal upon 
religion and religious men. By the late alteration in the 
laws,i the Labourers in the vineyard are given up to the 
power of the Inspector of the vineyard. If he has the mean- 
ness and malice to do so, an Inspector may worry and plague 

1 The Residence Act, 1817. 



96 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. 

to death any Labourer against whom he may have conceived 
an antipathy. . . . Men of very small incomes have often 
very acute feelings, and a curate trod on feels a pang as 
great as a bishop refuted." 

Another of the Bishop's ways of defending himself 
was to boast that, in spite of all his interrogations, he 
has actually excluded only two curates from his dio- 
cese: and this boast supplies the reviewer with one 
of his best apologues. " So the Emperor of Hayti 
boasted that he had only cut off two persons' heads 
for disagreeable behaviour at his table. In spite of 
the paucity of the visitors executed, the example oper- 
ated as a considerable impediment to conversation ; and 
the intensity of the punishment was found to be a full 
compensation for its rarity." 

In conclusion, the reviewer says : — " Now we have 
done with the Bishop. . . . Our only object in med- 
dling with the question is to restrain the arm of Power 
within the limits of moderation and. justice — one of 
the great objects which first led to the establishment 
of this journal, and which, we hope, will always con- 
tinue to characterize its efforts." 

To this period also belong two splendid discourses 
on the principles of Christian Justice, which Sydney 
Smith, as Chaplain to the High Sheriff, preached in 
York Minster at the Spring and Summer Assizes of 
1824. The first is styled "The Judge that smites 
contrary to the Law." ^ 

At the outset, the preacher thus defines his 
ground : — 

"I take these words of St. Paul as a condemnation of that 
1 Acts xxiii. 3. 



IV.] BENCH AND BAR 97 

man who smites contrary to the law ; as a praise of that man 
who judges according to the law ; as a religious theme upon 
the importance of human Justice to the happiness of man- 
kind : and, if it be that theme, it is appropriate to this place, 
and to the solemn public duties of the past and the ensuing 
week, over which some here present will preside, at which 
many here present will assist, and which almost all here 
present will witness." 

A Christian Judge in a free land must sedulously 
guard himself against the entanglements of Party. 
He must be careful to maintain his independence by 
seeking no promotion and asking no favours from 
those who govern. It may often be his duty to stand 
between the governors and the governed, and in that 
case his hopes of advantage may be found on one side, 
and his sense of duty on another. At such a crisis 
lie is trebly armed, if he is able from his heart to say 
— "I have vowed a vow before God. I have put on 
the robe of justice. Farewell avarice, farewell ambi- 
tion. Pass me who will, slight me who will, I will 
live henceforward only for the great duties of life. 
My business is on earth. My hope and my reward 
are with God." 

" He who takes the office of a Judge as it now exists in this 
country, takes in his hands a splendid gem, good and glorious, 
perfect and pure. Shall he give it up mutilated, shall he mar 
it, shall he darken it, shall it emit no light, shall it be valued 
at no price, shall it excite no wonder? Shall he find it a 
diamond, shall he leave it a stone ? What shall we say to the 
man who would wilfully destroy with fire the magnificent 
temple of God, in which I am now preaching ? Far worse is 
he who ruins the moral edifices of the world, which time and 
toil, and many prayers to God, and many sufferings of men, 
have reared ; who puts out the light of the times in which he 
lives, and leaves us to wander amid the darkness of corruption 

H 



98 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. 

and the desolation of sin. There may be, there probably is, 
in this church, some young man who may hereafter fill the 
office of an English Judge, when the greater part of those who 
hear me are dead, and mingled with the dust of the grave. 
Let him remember my words, and let them form and fashion 
his spirit : he cannot tell in what dangerous and awful times 
he may be placed ; but as a mariner looks to his compass in 
the calm, and looks to his compass in the storm, and never 
keeps his eyes off his compass, so in every vicissitude of a 
judicial life, deciding for the people, deciding against the 
people, protecting the just rights of kings, or restraining their 
unlawful ambition, let him ever cling to that pure, exalted, 
and Christian independence, which towers over the little 
motives of life ; which no hope of favour can influence, which 
no effort of power can control. 

" A Christian Judge in a free country should respect, on 
every occasion, those popular institutions of Justice, which 
were intended for his control, and for our security. To see 
humble men collected accidentally from the neighbourhood, 
treated with tenderness and courtesy by supreme magistrates 
of deep learning and practised understanding, from whose 
views they are perhaps at that moment differing, and whose 
directions they do not choose to follow ; to see at such times 
every disposition to warmth restrained, and every tendency to 
contemptuous feeling kept back ; to witness the submission of 
the great and wise, not when it is extorted by necessity, but 
when it is practised with willingness and grace, is a spectacle 
which is very grateful to Englishmen, which no other country 
sees, which, above all things, shows that a Judge has a pure, 
gentle, and Christian heart, and that he never wishes to smite 
contrary to the law. 

" A Christian Judge who means to be just must not fear to 
smite according to the law ; he must remember that he beareth 
not the sword in vain. Under his protection we live, under 
his protection we acquire, under his protection we enjoy. 
Without him, no man would defend his character, no man 
would preserve his substance. Proper pride, just gains, 
valuable exertions, all depend upon his firm wisdom. If he 
shrink from the severe duties of his office, he saps the f ounda- 



IV.] BENCH AND BAR 99 

tion of social life, betrays the highest interests of the world, 
and sits not to judge according to the law." 

But Justice, if it is to be truly just, must be 
tempered by mercy, and must have a scrupulous 
regard to the strength of temptation, the moral 
weakness of the subject, the degrading power of 
ignorance and poverty. — 

" All magistrates feel these things in the early exercise 
of their judicial power ; but the Christian Judge always feels 
them, is always youthful, always tender, when he is going to 
shed human blood ; retires from the business of men, com- 
munes with his own heart, ponders on the work of death, and 
prays to that Saviour who redeemed him that he may not 
shed the blood of man in vain." 

A pure, secure, and even-handed administration of 
Justice is the strongest safeguard of national stability 
and happiness. — 

" The whole tone and tenor of public morals is affected by 
the state of supreme Justice ; it extinguishes revenge, it 
communicates a spirit of purity and uprightness to inferior 
magistrates ; it makes the great good, by taking away im- 
punity; it banishes fraud, obliquity, and solicitation, and 
teaches men that the law is their right. Truth is its handmaid, 
freedom is its child, peace is its companion ; safety walks in 
its steps, victory follows in its train : it is the brightest emana- 
tion of the Gospel, it is the greatest attribute of God : it is 
that centre round which human motives and passions turn : 
and Justice, sitting on high, sees Genius and Power, and 
Wealth and Birth, revolving round her throne ; and teaches 
their paths and marks out their orbits, and warns with a loud 
voice, and rules with a strong arm, and carries order and 
discipline into a world, which but for her would only be a 
wild waste of passions. Look what we are, and what just laws 
have done for us : — a land of piety and charity ; — a land of 
churches, and hospitals, and altars; — a nation of good 



LafC. 



100 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. 

Samaritans; — a people of universal compassion. All lands, 
all seas, have heard we are brave. We have just sheathed 
that sword which defended the world; we have just laid down 
that buckler which covered the nations of the earth. God 
blesses the soil with fertility ; English looms labour for every 
climate. All the waters of the globe are covered with English 
ships. "We are softened by fine arts, civilized by humane 
literature, instructed by deep science ; and every people, as 
they break their feudal chains, look to the founders and 
fathers of freedom for examples which may animate, and 
rules which may guide. If ever a nation was happy, if ever 
a nation was visibly blessed by God — if ever a nation was 
honoured abroad, and left at home under a government (which 
we can now conscientiously call a liberal government) to the 
full career of talent, industry, and vigour, we are at this 
moment that people — and this is our happy lot. — First the 
Gospel has done it, and then Justice has done it ; and he who 
thinks it his duty to labour that this happy condition of 
existence may remain, must guard the piety of these times, 
and he must watch over the spirit of Justice which exists in 
these times. First, he must take care that the altars of God. 
are not polluted, that the Christian faith is retained in purity 
and in perfection : and then turning to human affairs, let him 
strive for spotless, incorruptible Justice ; — praising, honour- 
ing, and loving the just Judge, and abhorring, as the worst 
enemy of mankind, him who is placed there to ' judge after 
the law, and who smites contrary to the law.' " 

The second of these sermons is called " The Lawyer 
that tempted Christ." ^ The preacher begins by point- 
ing out that the Lawyer who, in the hope of entangling 
the new Teacher, asked what he should do to inherit 
eternal life, received a very plain answer — " not flowery, 
not metaphysical, not doctrinal.'^ The answer was, in 
effect, thus : " If you wish to live eternally, do your 
duty to God and man." Whereas the earlier sermon 

1 St. Luke X. 25. 



IV.] BENCH AND BAR 101 

was addressed to the Bench, this is addressed, very 
directly indeed, to the Bar. 

" There are probably in this church many persons of the 
profession of the law, who have often asked before, with 
better faith than their brother, and who do now ask this 
great question, ' What wshall I do to inherit eternal life?' I 
shall, therefore, direct to them some observations on the par- 
ticular duties they owe to society, because I think it suitable 
to this particular season, because it is of much more impor- 
tance to tell men how they are to be Christians in detail, than 
to exhort them to be Christians generally ; because it is of 
the highest utility to avail ourselves of these occasions, to 
show to classes of mankind what those virtues are, which 
they have more frequent and valuable opportunities of prac- 
tising, and what those faults and vices are, to which they 
are more particularly exposed. 

" It falls to the lot of those who are engaged in the active 
and arduous profession of the law to pass their lives in great 
cities, amidst severe and incessant occupation, requiring all 
the faculties, and calling forth, from time to time, many of 
the strongest passions of our nature. In the midst of all this, 
rivals are to be watched, superiors are to be cultivated, con- 
nexions cherished; some portion of life must be given to 
society, and some little to relaxation and amusement. When, 
then, is the question to be asked, ' What shall I do to inherit 
eternal life?' what leisure for the altar, what time for God? 
I appeal to the experience of men engaged in this profession, 
whether religious feelings and religious practices are not, 
without any speculative disbelief, perpetually sacrificed to 
the business of the world? Are not the habits of devotion 
gradually displaced by other habits of solicitude, hurry, and 
care ? Is not the taste for devotion lessened ? Is not the time 
for devotion abridged? Are you not more and more con- 
quered against your warnings and against your will ; not, per- 
haps, without pain and compunction, by the Mammon of life ? 
And what is the cure for this great evil to which your profes- 
sion exposes you? The cure is, to keep a sacred place in your 
heart, where Almighty God is enshrined, and where nothing 



102 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. 

human can enter ; to say to the world, ' Thus far shalt thou 
go, and no further ' ; to remember you are a lawyer, without 
forgetting you are a Christian ; to wish for no more wealth 
than ought to be possessed by an inheritor of the Kingdom of 
Heaven ; to covet no more honour than is suitable to a child 
of God ; boldly and bravely to set yourself limits, and to show 
to others you have limits, and that no professional eagerness, 
and no professional activity, shall ever induce you to infringe 
upon the rules and practices of religion : remember the text ; 
put the great question really, which the tempter of Christ 
only pretended to put. In the midst of your highest success, 
in the most perfect gratification of your vanity, in the most 
ample increase of your wealth, fall down at the feet of Jesus, 
and say, ' Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life ? ' " 

The advocate's duty to his client, with its resulting 
risk to the advocate's own conscience, is thus set 
forth : — 

" Justice is found, experimentally, to be most effectually 
promoted by the opposite efforts of practised and ingenious 
men presenting to the selection of an impartial judge the best 
arguments for the establishment and explanation of truth. 
It becomes, then, under such an arrangement, the decided 
duty of an advocate to use all the arguments in his power to 
defend the cause he has adopted, and to leave the effects of 
those arguments to the judgment of others. However useful 
this practice may be for the promotion of public justice, it is 
not without danger to the individual whose practice it be- 
comes. It is apt to produce a profligate indifference to truth in 
higher occasions of life, where truth cannot for a moment be 
trifled with, much less callously trampled on, much less sud- 
denly and totally yielded up to the basest of human motives. 
It is astonishing what unworthy and inadequate notions men 
are apt to form of the Christian faith. Christianity does not 
insist upon duties to an individual, and forget the duties which 
are owing to the great mass of individuals, which we call our 
country ; it does not teach you how to benefit your neighbour, 
and leave you to inflict the most serious injuries upon all 



IV.] BENCH AND BAR 103 

whose interest is bound up with you in the same land. I 
need not say to this congregation that there is a wrong and a 
right in public affairs, as there is a wrong and a right in 
private affairs. I need not prove that in any vote, in any line 
of conduct which affects the public interest, every Christian 
is bound, most solemnly and most religiously, to follow the 
dictates of his conscience. Let it be for, let it be against, let 
it please, let it displease, no matter with whom it sides, or 
what it thwarts, it is a solemn duty, on such occasions, to act 
from the pure dictates of conscience, and to be as faithful to 
the interests of the great mass of your fellow-creatures, as you 
would be to the interests of any individual of that mass. 
Why, then, if there be any truth in these observations, can 
that man be pure and innocent before God, can he be quite 
harmless and respectable before men, who in mature age, at a 
moment's notice, sacrifices to wealth and power all the fixed 
and firm opinions of his life ; who puts his moral principles to 
sale, and barters his dignity and his soul for the baubles of the 
world ? If these temptations come across you, then remember 
the memorable words of the text, ' What shall I do to inherit 
eternal life ? ' " 

After warning the younger barristers against their 
characteristic faults of self-sufficiency and affected 
pessimism, the preacher turns to another aspect of 
the advocate's duty towards his client. — 

" Upon those who are engaged in studying the laws of their 
country devolves the honourable and Christian task of defend- 
ing the accused : a sacred duty never to be yielded up, never 
to be influenced by any vehemence, nor intensity of public 
opinion. In these times of profound peace and unexampled 
prosperity, there is little danger in executing this duty, and 
little temptation to violate it : but human affairs change like 
the clouds of heaven ; another year may find us, or may leave 
us, in all the perils and bitterness of internal dissension ; and 
upon one of you may devolve the defence of some accused 
person, the object of men's hopes and fears, the single point 
on which the eyes of a whole people are bent. These are the 



104 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. 

occasions which try a man's inward heart, and separate the 
dross of human nature from the gold of human nature. On 
these occasions, never mind being mixed up for a moment with 
the criminal, and the crime ; fling yourself back upon great 
principles, fling yourself back upon God ; yield not one atom 
to violence ; suffer not the slightest encroachments of injustice; 
retire not one step before the frowns of power ; tremble not, 
for a single instant, at the dread of misrepresentation. The 
great interests of mankind are placed in your hands ; it is not 
so much the individual you are defending ; it is not so much 
a matter of consequence whether this, or that, is proved to be 
a crime ; but on such occasions, you are often called upon to 
defend the occupation of a defender, to take care that the 
sacred rights belonging to that character are not destroyed; 
that that best privilege of your profession, which so much 
secures our regard, and so much redounds to your credit, is 
never soothed by flattery, never corrupted by favour, never 
chilled by fear. You may practise this wickedness secretly, 
as you may any other wickedness ; you may suppress a topic 
of defence, or soften an attack upon opponents, or weaken 
your own argument and sacrifice the man who has put his 
trust in you, rather than provoke the powerful by the 
triumphant establishment of unwelcome innocence: but if 
you do this, you are a guilty man before God. It is better 
to keep within the pale of honour, it is better to be pure in 
Christ, and to feel that you are pure in Christ : and if ever 
the praises of mankind are sweet, if it be ever allowable to a 
Christian to breathe the incense of popular favour, and to say 
it is grateful and good, it is when the honest, temperate, 
unyielding advocate, who has protected innocence from the 
grasp of power, is followed from the hall of judgment by the 
prayers and blessings of a grateful people." 

And then comes an admonition about private duty. — 

" Do not lose God in the fervour and business of the world ; 
remember that the churches of Christ are more solemn, and 
more sacred, than your tribunals : bend not before the judges 
of the king, and forget the Judge of Judges ; search not other 



IV.] BENCH AND BAR 105 

men's hearts without heeding that your own hearts will be 
searched ; be innocent in the midst of subtility ; do not carry 
the lawful arts of your profession beyond your profession ; but 
when the robe of the advocate is laid aside, so live that no 
man shall dare to suppose your opinions venal, or that your 
talents and energy may be bought for a price : do not heap 
scorn and contempt upon your declining years by precipitate 
ardour for success in your profession ; but set out with a firm 
determination to be unknown, rather than ill-known ; and to 
rise honestly, if you rise at all. Let the world see that you 
have risen, because the natural probity of your heart leads you 
to truth ; because the precision and extent of your legal know- 
ledge enables you to find the right way of doing the right 
thing; because a thorough knowledge of legal art and legal 
form is, in your hands, not an instrument of chicanery, but 
the plainest, easiest and shortest way to the end of strife. . . . 
I hope you will weigh these observations, and apply them to 
the business of the ensuing week, and beyond that, in the 
common occupations of your profession : always bearing in 
your minds the emphatic words of the text, and often in the 
hurry of your busy, active lives, honestly, humbly, heartily 
exclaiming to the Son of God, ' Master, what shall I do to 
inherit eternal life ? ' " 



CHAPTEE V 

" CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION " BRISTOL — COMBE 

FLOREY — REFORM — PROMOTION 

The first quarter of the nineteentli century was now 
nearing its close, and the most exciting topic in 
domestic politics was the emancipation of the Eoman 
Catholics. The movement in favour of emancipation, 
though checked by the death of Pitt, had never com- 
pletely collapsed, and now it was quickened by the 
exertions of the " Catholic Association '^ in Ireland, and 
stimulated by the eloquence of O'Connell and Shell. 
Session after Session, emancipating Bills were brought 
into Parliament, and were supported by Castlereagh 
and Canning in opposition to their colleagues. The 
clergy of the Church of England — fashioned, almost 
to a man, on the model of Abraham Plymley — were 
dreadfully alarmed. Bishops charged against the pro- 
posed concession. Clerical meetings all over the 
country petitioned Parliament to defend them against 
insidious attacks on our national Protestantism. Before 
long, the storm rolled up to Yorkshire, and a meet- 
ing of the Clergy of the Archdeaconry of Cleveland 
was assembled at Thirsk on the 24th of March 1823. 
To this meeting a Eesolution was submitted, protest- 
ing against the emancipation of the Roman Catholics. 
A counter-petition was submitted by Sydney Smith, 

106 



CHAP, v.] "CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION" 107 

begging for an inquiry into all laws affecting tlie 
Eoman Catholics of Great Britain and Ireland, and 
" expressing a hope '^ that only those which were ab- 
solutely necessary to the safety of Church and State 
might be suffered to remain. It is difficult to conceive 
a milder proposition, but it was defeated by twenty- 
two votes to ten — Archdeacon Wrangham^ and the 
Kev. William Yernon,^ son of the Archbishop of York, 
voting in the minority. Sydney Smith's speech in 
support of his motion recapitulated the main argu- 
ments which, as Peter Plymley, he had adduced at an 
earlier stage of the same controversy. He urged that 
a Koman Catholic's oath was as sacred and as binding 
as a Protestant's ; that the English Constitution, with 
great advantage to its subjects, tolerated, and behaved 
generously to, all forms of religion (except Komanism) ; 
and that all possible danger to civil order in Ireland 
was averted by the stringency of the restrictions 
with which it was proposed to safeguard the gift of 
Emancipation. — 

" I defy Dr. Duigenan,^ in the full vigour of his incapacity, 
in the strongest access of that Protestant epilepsy with which 
he was so often convulsed, to have added a single security 
to the security of that oath. If Catholics are formidable, 
are not Protestant members elected by Catholics formidable ? 
But what will the numbers of the Catholics be ? Five or six 
in one house, and ten or twelve in the other ; and this I state 
upon the printed authority of Lord Harrowby, the tried and 
acknowledged friend of our Church, the amiable and revered 

1 Francis Wrangham (1769-1842), ArcMeacon of Cleveland. 

2 William Vernon-Harcourt (1789-1871), father of Sir William 
Vernon-Harcourt, M.P. 

3 Patrick Duigenan (1735-1816), LL.D., M.P. for the City of 
Armagh, and Protestant agitator. 



108 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. 

patron of its poorest members. The Catholics did not rebel 
during the war carried on for a Catholic king, in the year 
1715, nor in 1745. The government armed the Catholics in 
the American war. The last rebellion no one pretends to 
have been a Catholic rebellion ; the leaders were, with one 
exception, all Protestants. The king of Prussia, the emperor 
of Russia, do not complain of their Catholic subjects. The 
Swiss cantons, Catholic and Protestant, live together in 
harmony and peace. Childish prophecies of danger are al- 
ways made, and always falsified. The Church of England 
(if you will believe some of its members) is the most fainting, 
sickly, hysterical institution that ever existed in the world. 
Every thing is to destroy it, every thing to work its dissolu- 
tion and decay. If money is taken for tithes, the Church of 
England is to perish. If six old Catholic peers, and twelve 
commoners, come into Parliament, these holy hypochondriacs 
tear their hair, and beat their breast, and mourn over the 
ruin of their Established Church ! The Eanter is cheerful and 
confident. The Presbyterian stands upon his principles. The 
Quaker is calm and contented. The strongest, and wisest, and 
best establishment in the world, suffers in the full vigour of 
manhood, all the fears and the tremblings of extreme old age. 

" I conclude. Sir, remarks which, upon such a subject, might 
be carried to almost any extent, with presenting to you a 
petition to Parliament, and recommending it for the adoption 
of this meeting. And upon this petition, I beg leave to say 
a few words : — I am the writer of the petition I lay before 
you; and I have endeavoured to make it as mild and 
moderate as I possibly could. If I had consulted my own 
opinions alone, I should have said, that the disabling laws 
against the Catholics were a disgrace to the statute-book, 
and that every principle of justice, prudence, and humanity 
called for their immediate repeal; but he who wishes to do 
any thing useful in this world, must consult the opinions of 
others as well as his own. I knew very well if I had 
proposed such a petition to my excellent friends, the Arch- 
deacon and Mr. William Vernon, it w^ould not have suited 
the mildness and moderation of their character, that they 



v.] "CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION" 109 

should accede to it ; and I knew very well, that without the 
authority of their names, I could have done nothing. The 
present petition, when proposed to them by me, met, as I 
expected, with their ready and cheerful compliance. But 
though I propose this petition as preferable to the other, I 
should infinitely prefer that we do nothing, and disperse 
without coming to any resolution. 

" I am sick of these little clerico-political meetings. They 
bring a disgrace upon us and upon our profession, and make 
us hateful in the eyes of the laity. The best thing we could 
have done, would have been never to have met at all. The 
next best thing we can do (now we are met), is to do nothing. 
The third choice is to take my petition. The fourth, last, 
and worst, to adopt your own. The wisest thing I have 
heard here to-day, is the proposition of Mr. Chaloner, that 
we should burn both petitions, and ride home. Here we are, 
a set of obscure country clergymen, at the 'Three Tuns,' 
at Thirsk, like flies on the chariot-wheel; perched upon a 
question of which we can neither see the diameter, nor control 
the motion, nor influence the moving force. "What good can 
such meetings do ? They emanate from local conceit, adver- 
tize local ignorance ; make men, who are venerable by their 
profession, ridiculous by their pretensions, and swell that 
mass of paper-lumber, which, got up with infinite rural 
bustle, and read without being heard in Parliament, is 
speedily consigned to merited contempt." ^ 

1 The Yorkshire Gazette for April 12, 1823, contains a long 
letter from "A North Riding Clergyman," protesting against 
the language used by Sydney Smith. This clergyman states 
that the report of the meeting at Thirsk, given by the York 
Herald of March 29, was "unquestionably by the Minority 
themselves." It " prof esses to be a sketch of what was said and 
done at the meeting of the North Riding Clergy. Then the public 
is favoured with three considerable speeches, filling three close 
columns of a newspaper, on the one side ; and not with three 
lines, nay, not with one, of anything said on the other side. 
. . . Surely the whole of the twenty-two clergymen who dif- 
fered from the ten were not so astounded by the eloquence and 
display of their opponents as to remain absolutely speechless." It 



110 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. 

So ended Sydney Smith's first political speech ; and 
he took two years' holiday from the labours of the 
platform. On the 11th of April 1825, he returned 
to the charge. He had now acquired, in addition to 
Foston, the Kectory of Londesborough, which he held 
from 1823 to 1829, as " warming-pan " for his young 
friend and neighbour, William Howard.^ As Eector of 
Londesborough, he attended a meeting of the Clergy 
of the Archdeaconry of the East Riding, held at 
Beverley to protest against the Roman Catholic claims. 

The Torkshire Gazette reported the proceedings, and 
commented as follows : — 



is further said that " on the present occasion, and after assuring 
his learned brethren that he was not going to inflict upon them 
a speech, and some other remarks of similar accuracy, Mr. 
Smith immediately harangues them in a vehement and long 
speech ; during which, with firm resolve, it may seem, not to 
possess either 'overheated mind' or body, he nearly exhausted 
the ' Three Tuns ' of water." For this quotation, and for the date 
of the meeting, which had been erroneously stated by previous 
writers, I am indebted to the courtesy of Mr. J. S. R. Phillips, 
editor of the Yorkshire Post. 

1 (1808-1889) : became 8th Earl of Carlisle in 1864. The Rev. 
Richard Wilton, Canon of York and Rector of Londesborough, 
wrote in 1895: — "My former venerable friend, the oldest 
inhabitant, gave me some graphic descriptions of Sydney Smith's 
visit to the parish once or twice a year, and the interest which 
was felt in the village when he drove over from Foston, his other 
living, to preach an occasional sermon at Londesborough. His 
reading, and manner in the pulpit, were described to me as 
having been 'bold and impressive.' As soon as the sermon was 
over, he would hasten out of the church along with his 
hearers, and chat with the farmers about their turnips, or cattle, 
or corn-crops, being anxious to utilize his scant opportunities of 
conversing with his parishioners. . . . There was until lately 
living in this parish an old man aged eighty, who was proud of 
telling how he was invited over to Foston to ' brew for Sydney,' as 
he affectionately called him." 



v.] "CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION" 111 

" The meeting was unanimous in its determination to pe- 
tition Parliament against the claims of the Roman Catholics 

— one individual only excepted, the Rector of Londesborough. 
This gentleman made his speech on the occasion, enlarging 
on the inexpediency of refusing the Roman Catholics their 
claims. . . . The meeting, though by no means unprepared to 
hear extraordinary things from the Rector of Londesborough, 
as they had reason to anticipate from the proceedings of a 
meeting in another Archdeaconry about two years ago, were 
yet perfectly astonished to hear him assert that the Roman 
Catholic religion is now changed from what it was formerly, 
and that the oath of a Papist may, in all cases, be relied 
upon with the same confidence as that of a Protestant. . . . 
It is certainly due to the Rector of Londesborough to state 
in conclusion that he bore his defeat with his usual good 
humour, and further that, having learned previous to the 
meeting the intention of his curate to attend, but that he 
was hesitating out of delicacy to the declared opinions of his 
rector, the latter gentleman made it a particular request to 
his curate that he would persevere in his original intention." 

Sydney Smith's peroration, though it failed to per- 
suade his brother-clergy, is so good that it deserves to 
be reproduced. — 

"AYhen this bill passes, it will be a signal to all the 
religious sects of that unhappy country to lay aside their 
mutual hatred, and to live in peace, as equal men should live 
under equal law — when this bill passes, the Orange flag 
will fall — when this bill passes, the Green flag of the rebel 
will fall — when this bill passes, no other flag will fly in the 
land of Erin than that which blends the Lion with the Harp 

— that flag which, wherever it does fly, is the sign of freedom 
and of joy — the only banner in Europe which floats over a 
limited King and a free people." 

On this occasion the orator fared even less well than 
before in the matter of votes. His "excellent and 
respectable curate, Mr. Milestone,"^ voted against 

1 Mr. Stuart Reid gives to this curious name the more impressive 
form of Mayelstone. 



112 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. 

him ; and he was left in a minority of one. But he 
had the satisfaction of being able to write to a friend 
— "A poor clergyman whispered to me that he was 
quite of my way of thinking, but had nine children. 
/ begged he would remain a Protestant.'^ 

By this time the life of the Parliament, which had 
been elected on the demise of the Crown in 1820, was 
running out, and both parties were making vigorous 
preparations for the General Election. On the 29th 
January 1826, Sydney Smith wrote to Lady Grey : — 

" Terrible work in Yorkshire with the Pope ! I fight with 
the beasts at Ephesus every day. . . . This week I publish 
a pamphlet on the Catholic question, with my name to it. 
There is such an uproar here that I think it is gallant, and 
becoming a friend of Lord Grey's, to turn out and take a 
part in the affray. . . . What a detestable subject ! — stale, 
threadbare, and exhausted; but ancient errors cannot be 
met with fresh refutations." 

Not with fresh refutations, perhaps, but with a 
wonderful prodigality of fresh illustrations and con- 
ceits. A Letter to the Electors upon the Catholic Ques- 
tion begins with the thrice-repeated question, " Why is 
not a Catholic to be believed on his oath ? " 

" What says the law of the land to this extravagant piece 
of injustice? It is no challenge against a juryman to say 
he is a Catholic; he sits in judgment upon your life and 
your property. Did any man ever hear it said that such or 
such a person was put to death, or that he lost his property, 
because a Catholic was among the jurymen ? Is the ques- 
tion ever put ? Does it ever enter into the mind of the 
attorney or the counsellor to enquire of the faith of the 
jury? If a man sell a horse, or a house, or a field, does he 
ask if the purchaser be a Catholic? Appeal to your own 
experience, and try, by that fairest of all tests, the justice of 
this enormous charge. 



v.] "CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION" 113 

" We are in treaty with many of the powers of Europe, 
because we believe in the good faith of Catholics. Two-thirds 
of Europe are, in fact, Catholics ; are they all perjured ? Eor 
the first fourteen centuries all the Christian world were 
Catholics ; did they live in a constant state of perjury ? I am 
sure these objections against the Catholics are often made by 
very serious and honest men, but I much doubt if Voltaire 
has advanced any thing against the Christian religion so 
horrible as to say that two-thirds of those who profess it are 
unfit for all the purposes of civil life ; for who is fit to live in 
society who does not respect oaths ? 

" I have lived a little in the world, but I never happened 
to hear a single Catholic even suspected of getting into office 
by violating his oath ; the oath which they are accused of 
violating is an insuperable barrier to them all. Is there a 
more disgraceful spectacle in the world than that of the Duke 
of Norfolk hovering round the House of Lords in the execution 
of his office,^ which he cannot enter as a peer of the realm? 
disgraceful to the bigotry and injustice of his country — to his 
own sense of duty, honourable in the extreme : he is the 
leader of a band of ancient and high-principled gentlemen, 
who submit patiently to obscurity and privation rather than 
do violence to their conscience. In all the fury of party, I 
never heard the name of a single Catholic mentioned, who 
was suspected of having gained, or aimed at, any political 
advantage, by violating his oath. I have never heard so 
bitter a slander supported by the slightest proof. Every man 
in the circle of his acquaintance has met with Catholics, and 
lived with them probably as companions. If this immoral 
lubricity were their characteristic, it would surely be per- 
ceived in common life. Every man's experience would cor- 
roborate the imputation; but I can honestly say that some 
of the best and most excellent men I have ever met with have 
been Catholics; perfectly alive to the evil and inconvenience 
of their situation, but thinking themselves bound by the law 
of God and the law of honour, not to avoid persecution by 

1 As Earl Marshal. 



114 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. 

falsehood and apostasy. I remember hearing the Catholics 
accused from the Hustings of disregarding oaths, and within 
an hour of that time I saw five Catholic voters rejected, 
because they would not take the oath of Supremacy ; and 
these were not men of rank who tendered themselves, but 
ordinary tradesmen. The accusation was received with loud 
huzzas, the poor Catholics retired unobserved and in silence. 
No one praised the conscientious feeling of the constituents; 
no one rebuked the calumny of the candidate. 

"I beg to remind you, that in talking of the Catholic 
religion, you must talk of the Catholic religion as it is carried 
on in Ireland ; you have nothing to do with Spain, or France, 
or Italy : the religion you are to examine is the Irish Catholic 
religion. You are not to consider what it was, but what it 
is; not what individuals profess, but what is generally pro- 
fessed; not what individuals do, but what is generally 
practised. I constantly see, in advertisements from county 
meetings, all these species of monstrous injustice played off 
against the Catholics. The Inquisition exists in Spain and 
Portugal, therefore I confound place, and vote against the 
Catholics of Ireland, where it never did exist, nor was 
purposed to be instituted. There have been many cruel perse- 
cutions of Protestants by Catholic governments ; and, there- 
fore, I will confound time and place, and vote against the 
Irish, who live centuries after these persecutions, and in a 
totally different country. Doctor this, or Doctor that, of the 
Catholic Church has written a very violent and absurd 
pamphlet; therefore I will confound persons, and vote 
against the whole Irish Catholic Church, which has neither 
sanctioned nor expressed any such opinions. I will continue 
the incapacities of men of this age, because some men, in distant 
ages, deserved ill of other men in distant ages. They shall 
expiate the crimes committed, before they were born, in a 
land they never saw ; by individuals they never heard of. I 
will charge them with every act of folly which they have 
never sanctioned and cannot control. I will sacrifice space, 
time, and identity, to my zeal for the Protestant Church. 



v.] "CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION" 115 

Now, in the midst of all this violence, consider, for a moment, 
how you are imposed on by words, and what a serious viola- 
tion of the rights of your feUow-creatures you are committing. 
Mr. Murphy lives in Limerick, and Mr. Murphy and his son 
are subjected to a thousand inconveniences and disadvantages 
because they are Catholics. Murphy is a wealthy, honour- 
able, excellent man ; he ought to be in the corporation ; he 
cannot get in because he is a Catholic. His son ought to be 
King's Counsel for his talents, and his standing at the Bar ; 
he is prevented from reaching this dignity, because he is a 
Catholic. Why, what reasons do you hear for all this? 
Because Queen Mary, three hundred years before the natal 
day of Mr. Murphy, murdered Protestants in Smithfield; 
because Louis xiv. dragooned his Protestant subjects, when 
the predecessor of Murphy's predecessor was not in being ; 
because men are confined in prison, in Madrid, twelve 
degrees more south than Murphy has ever been in his life ; 
all ages, all climates, are ransacked to perpetuate the slavery 
of Murphy, the ill-fated victim of political anachronisms. 

" When are mercy and justice, in fact, ever to return upon 
the earth, if the sins of the elders are to be for ever visited on 
those who are not even their children ! Should the first act of 
liberated Greece be to recommence the Trojan war ? Are the 
French never to forget the Sicilian Vespers ; or the Americans 
the long war waged against their liberties V Is any rule wise, 
which may set the Irish to recollect what they have suffered ? 

" It is no part of my province to defend every error of the 
Catholic Church ; I believe it has many errors, though I am 
sure these errors are grievously exaggerated and misrepre- 
sented. . . . But, if you will take a long view instead of a 
confined view, and look generally to the increase of human 
happiness, the best check upon the increase of Popery, the best 
security for the establishment of the Protestant Church is, that 
the British empire shall be preserved in a state of the greatest 
strength, union, and opulence. My cry then is, No Popery ; 
therefore emancipate the Catholics, that they may not join 



116 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. 

with foreign Papists in time of war. Churclifor ever ; therefore 
emancipate the Catholics, that they may not help to pull it down. 
King for ever] therefore emancipate the Catholics, that they 
may become his loyal subjects. Great Britain for ever ; there- 
fore emancipate the Catholics, that they may not put an end 
to its perpetuity. Our Government is essentially Protestant ; 
therefore, by emancipating the Catholics, give up a few cir- 
cumstances which have nothing to do with the essence. The 
Catholics are disguised enemies ; therefore, by emancipation, 
turn them into open friends. They have a double allegiance ; 
therefore, by emancipation, make their allegiance to their 
King so grateful, that they will never confound it with the 
spiritual allegiance to their Pope. It is very difficult for 
electors, who are much occupied by other matters, to choose the 
right path amid the rage and fury of faction : but 1 give you 
one mark, vote for a free altar ; give what the law compels you 
to give to the Establishment; (thatdone,) no chains, no prisons, 
no bonfires for a man's faith; and, above all, no modern 
chains and prisons under the names of disqualifications and 
incapacities, which are only the cruelty and tyranny of a more 
civilized age ; civil offices open to all, a Catholic or a Protestant 
alderman, a Moravian or a Church of England or a Wesleyan 
justice, no oppression, no tyranny in belief: a free altar, an 
open road to heaven; no human insolence, no human narrow- 
ness, hallowed by the name of God. 

" Our Government is called essentially Protestant ; but, if 
it be essentially Protestant in the distribution of office, it 
should be essentially Protestant in the imposition of taxes. 
The Treasury is open to all religions, Parliament only to one. 
The tax-gatherer is the most indulgent and liberal of human 
beings; he excludes no creed, imposes no articles; but counts 
Catholic cash, pockets Protestant paper, and is candidly and 
impartially oppressive to every description of the Christian 
world. Can anything be more base than when you want the 
blood or the money of Catholics, to forget that they are 
Catholics, and to remember only that they are British 
subjects ; and, when they ask for the benefits of the British 



v.] "CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION" 117 

Constitution, to remember only that they are Catholics, and 
to forget that they are British subjects ? 

"No Popery was the cry of the great English Revolution, 
because the increase and prevalence of Popery in England 
would, at that period, have rendered this island tributary to 
France. The Irish Catholics were, at that period, broken to 
pieces by the severity and military execution of Cromwell, 
and by the Penal Laws. They are since become a great and 
formidable people. The same dread of foreign influence 
makes it now necessary that they should be restored to 
political rights. Must the friends of rational liberty join in a 
clamour against the Catholics now, because, in a very different 
state of the world, they excited that clamour a hundred years 
ago? I remember a house near Battersea Bridge which 
caught fire, and there was a great cry of ' Water, water ! ' 
Ten years after, the Thames rose, and the people of the house 
were nearly drowned. Would it not have been rather 
singular to have said to the inhabitants — ' I heard you calling 
for water ten years ago ; why don't you call for it now ? ' " 

" Mild and genteel people do not like the idea of persecu- 
tion, and are advocates for toleration ; but then they think it 
no act of intolerance to deprive Catholics of political power. 
The history of all this is, that all men scarcely like to punish 
others for not being of the same opinion with themselves, and 
that this sort of privation is the only species of persecution, of 
which the improved feeling and advanced cultivation of the 
age will admit. Fire and faggot, chains and stone walls, have 
been clamoured away ; nothing remains but to mortify a man's 
pride, and to limit his resources, and to set a mark upon him, 
by cutting him off from his fair share of political power. By 
this receipt insolence is gratified, and humanity is not 
shocked. The gentlest Protestant can see, with dry eyes. 
Lord Stourton excluded from parliament, though he would 
abominate the most distant idea of personal cruelty to Mr. 
Petre. This is only to say that he lives in the nineteenth, 
instead of the sixteenth century, and that he is as intolerant 
in religious matters as the state of manners existing in his age 



118 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. 

will permit. Is it not the same spirit which wounds the 
pride of a fellow-creature on account of his faith, or which 
casts his body into the flames ? Are they any thing else but 
degrees and modifications of the same principle ? The minds 
of these two men no more differ because they differ in their 
degrees of punishment, than their bodies differ because one 
wore a doublet in the time of Mary, and the other wears a 
coat in the reign of George. I do not accuse them of inten- 
tional cruelty and injustice : I am sure there are very many 
excellent men who would be shocked if they could conceive 
themselves to be guilty of any thing like cruelty ; but they 
innocently give a wrong name to the bad spirit which is 
within them, and think they are tolerant because they are 
not as intolerant as they could have been in other times, but 
cannot be now. The true spirit is to search after God and for 
another life toith lowliness of heart ; to fling doion no man's 
altar, to punish no man's prayer ; to heap no penalties and no 
pains on those solemn supplications which, in divers tongues, and 
in varied forms, and in temples of a thousand shapes, hut with 
one deep sense of human dependence, men pour forth to God.'' 

At this point of his Letter, the writer turns aside to 
combat the contention that, because Koman Catholics 
have in times past persecuted Protestants, therefore 
they must now be deprived of their civil rights. If 
this contention be sound, the Protestant must, by- 
parity of reasoning, be disfranchised. 

" The first object of men who love party better than truth, 
is to have it believed that the Catholics alone have been per- 
secutors. But what can be more flagrantly unjust than to 
take over notions of history only from the conquering and 
triumphant party? If you think the Catholics have not 
their Book of Martyrs as well as the Protestants, take the 
following enumeration of some of their most learned and care- 
ful writers. The whole number of Catholics who suffered 
death in England for the exercise of the Catholic religion since 
the Reformation stands thus : — 



v.] "CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION '» 119 



Henry viii., .... 


59 


Elizabeth, . , . . 


204 


James i., .... 


25 


Charles i., > 
and Commonwealth, ) 


23 


Charles ii., .... 


8 


Total, . 


319 



" Henry viii., with consummate impartiality, burnt three 
Protestants and hanged four Catholics for different errors in 
religion on the same day, and at the same place. Elizabeth 
burnt two Dutch Anabaptists for some theological tenets, 
July 22, 1575, Fox the martyrologist vainly pleading with the 
queen in their favour. In 1579, the same Protestant queen 
cut off the hand of Stubbs, the author of a tract against 
popish connexion, of Singleton, the printer, and Page, the 
disperser of the book. Camden saw it done. Warburton 
properly says it exceeds in cruelty any thing done by 
Charles i. On the 4th of June, Mr. Elias Thacker and Mr. 
John Capper, two ministers of the Brownist persuasion, were 
hanged at St. Ednmnd's-bury, for dispersing books against 
the Common Prayer. With respect to the great part of 
the Catholic victims, the law was fully and literally exe- 
cuted: after being hanged up, they were cut down alive, 
dismembered, ripped up, and their bowels burnt before 
their faces ; after which they were beheaded and quartered. 
The time employed in this butchery was very consider- 
able, and, in one instance, lasted more than half an hour. 

" The uncandid excuse for all this is, that the greater part 
of these men were put to death for political, not for religious, 
crimes. That is, a law is first passed, making it high treason 
for a priest to exercise his function in England, and so, when 
he is caught and burnt, this is not religious persecution, but 
an offence against the State. We are, I hope, all too busy to 
need any answer to such childish, uncandid reasoning as this." 

And then the Letter goes on to give, with the fullest 
apparatus of details, dates, and authorities, the miser- 
able tale of religious persecution practised, during three 



120 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. 

centuries, at home and abroad, by Anglicans on Puri- 
tans, by Protestants on Komanists, by orthodox Pro- 
testants on heterodox Protestants ; and then, to clinch 
his argument and drive it home, he gives the substance 
of the Penal Code under which Irish Catholics suffered 
so cruelly and so long. 

" With such facts as these, the cry of persecution will not 
do ; it is unwise to make it, because it can be so very easily, 
and so very justly retorted. The business is to forget and 
forgive, to kiss and be friends, and to say nothing of what 
has passed ; which is to the credit of neither party. There 
have been atrocious cruelties, and abominable acts of injus- 
tice, on both sides. It is not worth while to contend who 
shed the most blood, or whether death by fire is worse than 
hanging or starving in prison. As far as England itself is 
concerned, the balance may be better preserved. Cruelties 
exercised upon the Irish go for nothing in English reason- 
ing ; but if it were not uncandid and vexatious to consider 
Irish persecutions ^ as part of the case, I firmly believe there 
have been two Catholics put to death for religious causes in 
Great Britain for one Protestant who has suffered: not that 
this proves much, because the Catholics have enjoyed the 
sovereign power for so few years between this period and the 
Reformation; and certainly it must be allowed that they 
were not inactive, during that period, in the great work of 
pious combustion. 

" It is however some extenuation of the Catholic excesses, 
that their religion was the religion of the whole of Europe 
when the innovation began. They were the ancient lords 

1 " Thurloe writes to Henry Cromwell to catch up some thousand 
Irish boys, to send to the colonies. Henry writes back he has 
done so; and desires to know whether his Highness would 
choose as many girls to be caught up: and he adds, 'doubtless 
it is a business in which God will appear.' Suppose bloody 
Queen Mary had caught up and transported three or four 
thousand Protestant boys and girls from the three Ridings of 
Yorkshire! ! ! ! ! ! S. S." 



v.] "CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION" 121 

and masters of faith, before men introduced the practice of 
thinking for themselves in these matters. The Protestants 
have less excuse, who claimed the right of innovation, and 
then turned round upon other Protestants w^ho acted upon 
the same principle, or upon Catholics who remained as they 
were, and visited them with all the cruelties from which they 
had themselves so recently escaped. 

" Both sides, as they acquired power, abused it ; and both 
learnt, from their sufferings, the great secret of toleration and 
forbearance. If you wish to do good in the times in which 
you live, contribute your efforts to perfect this grand work. 
I have not the most distant intention to interfere in local 
politics; but I advise you never to give a vote to any man 
whose only title for asking it is that he means to continue 
the punishments, privations, and incapacities of any human 
beings, merely because they worship God in the way they 
think best : the man who asks for your vote upon such a plea, 
is, probably, a very weak man, who believes in his own bad 
reasoning, or a very artful man, who is laughing at you for 
your credulity : at all events, he is a man who knowingly or 
unknowingly exposes his country to the greatest dangers, and 
hands down to posterity all the foolish opinions and all the 
bad passions which prevail in those times in which he happens 
to live. Such a man is so far from being that friend to the 
Church, which he pretends to be, that he declares its safety 
cannot be reconciled with the franchises of the people ; for 
what worse can be said of the Church of England than this, 
that wherever it is judged necessary to give it a legal estab- 
lishment, it becomes necessary to deprive the body of the 
people, if they adhere to their old opinions, of their liberties, 
and of all their free customs, and to reduce them to a state of 
civil servitude ? Sydney Sjiith." 

After the discharge of this tremendous missile 
against the tottering fortress of bigotry, the energetic 
engineer sought a brief interlude of rest and recrea- 
tion. His money-matters had of late years improved. 
An aunt had died and left him a legacy, and the 



122 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. 

Kectory of Londesborough was a profitable prefer- 
ment. The income thus augmented enabled him to 
realize a long-cherished dream and pay his first visit 
to Paris, in the spring of 1826. There he met 
some old friends, made several new acquaintances, 
ate some excellent but expensive dinners, mastered 
the Louvre in a quarter of an hour, and saw Talma 
in tragedy and Mademoiselle Mars in "genteel 
comedy." At the Opera he noticed that "the house 
was full of English, who talk loud, and seem to care 
little for other people. This is their characteristic, 
and a very brutal and barbarous distinction it is.'' He 
keenly admired the luxury and beauty and prettiness 
of Paris, and especially the profusion of glass in French 
drawing-rooms. "I remember entering a room with 
glass all round it, and saw myself reflected on every 
side. I took it for a meeting of the clergy, and was 
delighted of course.'^ He returned to England in 
May ; on the 2nd of June Parliament was dissolved. 
" We have been," he wrote, " in the horror of Elections 
— each party acting and thinking as if the salvation 
of several planets depended upon the adoption of Mr. 
Johnson and the rejection of Mr. Jackson." In July, 
Thomas Babington Macaulay, a young and unsuccess- 
ful barrister, found himself on circuit at York. He 
was told that Mr. Smith had come to see him, and, 
when the visitor was admitted, he recognized — 

" the Smith of Smiths, Sydney Smith, alias Peter Plymley. 
I had forgotten his very existence till I discerned the queer 
contrast between his black coat and his snow-white head, and 
the equally curious contrast between the clerical amplitude of 
his person, and the most unclerical wit, whim, and petulance 
of his eye." 



v.] "CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION" 123 

Macaulay spent the following Sunday at Foston 
Kectoiy, and thus records his impressions: — 

"I understand that S. S. is a very respectable apothecary, 
and most liberal of his skill, his medicine, his soup, and his 
wine, among the sick. He preached a very queer sermon — 
the former half too familiar, and the latter half too florid, but 
not without some ingenuity of thought and expression. . . . 

" His misfortune is to have chosen a profession at once 
above him and below him. Zeal would have made him a 
prodigy; formality and bigotry would have made him a 
bishop ; but he could neither rise to the duties of his order, 
nor stoop to its degradation." 

In December Sydney wrote to a newly-elected 
Member of Parliament : — 

" I see you have broken ice in the House of Commons. 
I shall be curious to hear your account of your feelings, of 
what colour the human creatures looked who surrounded you, 
and how the candles and Speaker appeared. . . . For God's 
sake, open upon the Chancery. On this subject there can be 
no excess of vituperation and severity. Advocate also free 
trade in ale and ale-houses. Respect the Church, and believe 
that the insignificant member of it who now addresses you is 
most truly yours, Sydney Smith." 

At the same time he wrote as follows to a young 
friend — Lord John Russell — who had lost his seat 
and published a book : — 

" Dear John, — I have read your book on the State of 
Europe since the Peace of Utrecht with much pleasure — 
sensible, liberal, spirited, philosophical, well-written. Go 
on writing History. Write a History of Louis xiv., and put 
the world right about that old Beast. 

" I am sorry you are not in parliament. You ought to be 
everywhere where honest and bold men can do good. Health 
and respect. Ever yours, Sydney Smith." 



124 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. 

The year 1827 opened dramatically. On the 18th 
February Lord Liverpool, who had been Prime Minister 
since the assassination of Spencer Perceval in 1812, 
was suddenly stricken by fatal illness. On the 10th 
of April King George iv. found himself, much against 
his will, constrained to entrust the formation of a Gov- 
ernment to George Canning. Canning was avow- 
edly favourable to the Eoman Catholic claims, and 
on that account some of the most important of his 
former colleagues declined to serve under him. The 
Ministry was reconstructed with an infusion of Whigs ; 
and the brilliant but unscrupulous Copley became 
Chancellor with the title of Lord Lyndhurst.-^ 

A Ministry, containing Whigs as well as Tories and 
committed to the cause of Eoman Catholic emancipa- 
tion, seemed likely to open the way of preferment to 
Sydney Smith. Knowing that his income would soon 
be materially reduced by the cessation of his tenure 
of Londesborough, he wrote to some of his friends 
among the new Ministers and boldly stated his claims. 
One of these Ministers seems to have made a rather 
chilly response ; and the applicant did not spare him. — 

" I am much obliged by your polite letter. You appeal to 
my good-nature to prevent me from considering your letter 
as a decent method of putting me off. Y'our appeal, I assure 
you, is not made in vain. I do not think you mean to put me 
off ; because I am the most prominent, and was for a long 
time the only, clerical advocate of that question, by the proper 
arrangement of which you believe the happiness and safety of 
the country would be materially improved. I do not believe 
you mean to put me off ; because, in giving me some pro- 
motion, you will teach the clergy, from whose timidity you 
have everything to apprehend, and whose influence upon the 

1 John Singleton Copley (1772- 18G3). 



v.] BRISTOL 125 

people you cannot doubt, that they may, under your Govern- 
ment, obey the dictates of their consciences without sacrific- 
ing the emoluments of their profession. I do not think you 
mean to i^ut me off ; because, in the conscientious adminis- 
tration of that patronage with which you are entrusted, I 
think it will occur to you that something is due to a person 
who, instead of basely chiming in with the bad passions of 
the multitude, has dedicated some talent and some activity 
to soften religious hatreds, and to make men less violent and 
less foolish than he found them." 

In July lie wrote to a friend : — 

" The worst political news is that Canning is not well, 
and that the Duke of Wellington has dined with the King. 
Canning dead, Peel is the only man remaining alive in the 
House of Commons. I mean, the only man in his senses." 

On the 8tli of August Canning died, and was 
succeeded by Lord Goderich, who in turn made way for 
the Duke of Wellington in January 1828, Lord Lynd- 
hurst again becoming Chancellor. 

On the 1st of January 1828, Sydney Smith's second 
daughter, Emily, was married to Nathaniel Hibbert, 
afterwards of Munden House, near Watford. Her 
father wrote : — 

" We were married on New Year's Day, and are gone ! I 
feel, as if I had lost a limb, and were walking about with one 
leg — and nobody pities this description of invalids." 

Three weeks later. Lord Chancellor Lyndhurst, yield- 
ing to private friendship what the Whigs had refused 
to political loyalty, appointed the Eector of Foston to 
a Prebendal Stall in Bristol Cathedral. This brought 
him at length official station in the Church, and a 
permanent instead of a terminable income. He wrote 
from Bristol on the 17th of February : — 

" An extremely comfortable Prebendal house ; seven-stall 



126 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. 

stables and room for four carriages, so that I can hold all 
your cortege when you come; looks to the south, and is per- 
fectly snug and parsonic ; masts of West-Indiamen seen from 
the windows. ... I have lived in perfect solitude ever since 
I have been here, but am perfectly happy. The novelty of 
this place amuses me." 

From the time of Ms appointment to Bristol, Sydney 
Smith severed his connexion with the Edinburgh Re- 
vieWj holding that anonymous journalism was incon- 
sistent with the position of an ecclesiastical dignitary. 
He had contributed to the Review for a quarter of a 
century ; and, by a happy accident, his last utterance, 
in the organ through which he had so long and so 
strenuously fought for freedom, was yet one more plea 
for Roman Catholic emancipation. Yet once again he 
urged, with all his force, the baseness of deserting the 
good cause, and the danger and cruelty of delaying 
justice. — 

" There is little new to be said ; but we must not be silent, 
or, in these days of baseness and tergiversation, we shall be 
supposed to have deserted our friend the Pope, and they will 
say of us, Prostant venales apud Lambeth et Whitehall. God 
forbid it should ever be said of us with justice. It is pleas- 
ant to loll and roll and to accumulate — to be a purple-and- 
fine-linen man, and to be called by some of those nicknames 
which frail and ephemeral beings are so fond of accumulat- 
ing upon each other; — but the best thing of all is to live 
like honest men, and to add something to the cause of liber- 
ality, justice, and truth. 

" We should like to argue this matter with a regular Tory 
Lord, whose members vote steadily against the Catholic ques- 
tion. ' I wonder that mere fear does not make you give up 
the Catholic question ! Do you mean to put this fine place 
in danger — the venison — the pictures — the pheasants — 
the cellars — the hot-house and the grapery ? Should you like 



v.] BRISTOL 127 

to see six or seven thousand French or Americans landed in 
Ireland, and aided by a universal insurrection of the Catholics? 
Is it worth your while to run the risk of their success ? What 
evil from the possible encroachment of Catholics, by civil 
exertions, can equal the danger of such a position as this ? 
How can a man of your carriages, and horses, and hounds, 
think of putting your high fortune in such a predicament, and 
crying out, like a schoolboy or a chaplain, ' Oh, we shall beat 
them ! we shall put the rascals down ! ' No Popery, I admit 
to your Lordship, is a very convenient cry at an election, and 
has answered your end ; but do not push the matter too far. 
To bring on a civil war for No Popery, is a very foolish pro- 
ceeding in a man who has two courses and a remove ! As you 
value your side-board of plate, your broad riband, your pier- 
glasses — if obsequious domestics and large rooms are dear to 
you — if you love ease and flattery, titles and coats of arms — if 
the labour of the French cook, the dedication of the expecting 
poet, can move you — if you hope for a long life of side-dishes 
— if you are not insensible to the periodical arrival of the 
turtle-fleets — emancipate the Catholics ! Do it f oryour ease, 
do it for your indolence, do it for your safety — emancipate 
and eat, emancipate and drink — emancipate, and preserve 
the rent-roll and the family estate ! " 

In conclusion he gives a word of warning first to his 
Eoman Catholic clients, imploring them to be patient 
as well as firm ; and then to the various sections of 
the " No Popery " party in England. — 

"7^0 the Base. — Sweet children of turpitude, beware ! the 
old antipopery people are fast perishing away. Take heed 
that you are not surprised by an emancipating king, or an 
emancipating administration. Leave a Locus pcenitentice ! — 
prepare a place for retreat — get ready your equivocations 
and denials. The dreadful day may yet come, when liberality 
may lead to place and power. We understand these matters 
here. It is safest to be moderately base — to be flexible in 
shame, and to be always ready for what is generous, good, and 
just, when any thing is to be gained by virtue." 



128 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. 

The suggested prophecy had not long to wait for its 
fulfilment. In the summer of 1828, William Vesey 
Fitzgerald, a great landowner in County Clare, and one 
of the Members for that county, accepted office in 
the Government as President of the Board of Trade, 
thereby vacating his seat. Lord Beaconsfield shall tell 
the remainder of the story. " An Irish lawyer, a pro- 
fessional agitator, himself a Roman Catholic and there- 
fore ineligible, announced himself as a candidate in 
opposition to the new minister, and on the day of 
election thirty thousand peasants, setting at defiance 
all the landowners of the county, returned O'Connell 
at the head of the poll, and placed among not the least 
memorable of historical events — the Clare Election." ^ 

This election decided the emancipation of the 
Roman Catholics, and the cause, for which Sydney 
Smith had striven so heroically, was won at last. 
On the 28th of August 1828 he wrote to a Roman 
Catholic friend: — 

"Brougham thinks the Catholic question as good as 
carried ; but I never think myself as good as carried, till my 
horse brings me to my stable-door. . . . What am I to do 
■with my time, or you with yours, after the Catholic question 
is carried ? " 

To the same friend he wrote : — 

"You will be amused by hearing that I am to preach 
the 5th of November 2 sermon at Bristol, and to dine at 
the 5th of November dinner with the Mayor and Corporation 
of Bristol. All sorts of bad theology are preached at the 
Cathedral on that day, and all sorts of bad toasts drunk at 

1 Endymion, vol. i. chapter vi. 

2 The special services for " Gunpowder Treason " and other State 
Holy Days were discontinued by Royal Warrant in 1859. 



v.] BRISTOL 129 

the Mansion House. I will do neither the one nor the other, 
nor bow the knee in the house of Kimmon." 

On the 5th of November 1828, he wrote to Lord 
Holland : — 

"To-day I have preached an honest sermon before the 
Mayor and Corporation in the Cathedral — the most Protes- 
tant Corporation in England ! They stared at me with all 
their eyes. Several of them could not keep the turtle on 
their stomachs." 

The sermon ^ well deserved the epithet. It glanced, 
as the occasion demanded, at the civil grievances of 
the Roman Catholics, and then it went on to lay 
down some simple but sufficient rules by which men 
should regulate their judgment on religious forms and 
bodies with which they do not sympathize. — 

"Our holy religion consists of some doctrines which 
influence practice, and of others which are purely speculative. 
If religious errors be of the former description, they may, 
perhaps, be fair objects of human interference ; but, if the 
opinion be merely theological and speculative, there the right 
of human interference seems to end, because the necessity 
for such interference does not exist. Any error of this 
nature is between the Creator and the creature, — between 
the Redeemer and the redeemed. If such opinions are not 
the best opinions which can be found, God Almighty will 
punish the error, if mere error seemeth to the Almighty a 
fit object of punishment. Why may not a man wait if God 
waits? AVhere are we called upon in Scripture to pursue 
men for errors purely speculative ? — to assist Heaven in 
punishing those offences which belong only to Heaven? — in 
fighting unasked for w^hat w^e deem to be the battles of 
God, — of that patient and merciful God, who pities the 

1 From Col. iii. 12, 13— "Put on, as the elect of God, kindness, 
humbleness of mind, meekness, long-suffering; forbearing one 
another, and forgiving one another." 

K 



130 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. 

frailties we do not pity — who forgives the errors we do not 
forgive, — who sends rain upon the just and the unjust, and 
maketh His sun to shine upon the evil and the good. 

" I shall conclude my sermon (extended, I am afraid, already 
to an unreasonable length), by reciting to you a very short 
and beautiful apologue, taken from the Rabbinical writers. 
It is, I believe, quoted by Bishop Taylor in his Holy Living 
and Dying. I have not now access to that book, but I quote 
it to you from memory, and should be made truly happy if 
you would quote it to others from memory also. 

" <■ As Abraham was sitting in the door of his tent, there 
came unto him a wayfaring man ; and Abraham gave him 
water for his feet, and set bread before him. And Abraham 
said unto him, Let us now worship the Lord our God before 
we eat of this bread. And the wayfaring man said unto 
Abraham, I will not worship the Lord thy God, for thy God 
is not my God ; but I will worship my God, even the God of 
my fathers. But Abraham was exceeding wroth ; and he rose 
up to put the wayfaring man forth from the door of his tent. 
And the voice of the Lord was heard in the tent — Abraham, 
Abraham ! have I borne with this man for three score and 
ten years, and can'st thou not bear with him for one 
hour?"'i 

This sermon was published by request, and the 
preacher apologized in the preface for "sending to 
the press such plain rudiments of common charity 
and common sense." 

The beginning of 1829 was darkened by what 
Sydney Smith called "the first great misfortune of 
his life." On the 14th of April, his eldest son Doug- 
las died, after a long illness, in his twenty-fifth year. 
His health had always been delicate, but, in spite of 

iThis apologue (which, the preacher thought, "would make a 
charming and useful placard against the bigoted ") occurs in the 
Liberty of Prophesying, and has been traced to Gentius, the Latin 
translator of Saadi. 



v.] COMBE FLORE Y 131 

repeated illnesses, lie had become Captain of the 
King's Scholars at Westminster,^ and a Student of 
Christ Church. His epitaph says — " His life was 
blameless. His death was the first sorrow he ever 
occasioned his parents, but it was deep and lasting." 
On the 29th of April his father wrote — " Time and 
the necessary exertions of life will restore me " ; but 
four months later the note is changed. — 

" I never suspected how children weave themselves about 
the heart. My son had that quality which is longest remem- 
bered by those who remain behind — a deep and earnest 
affection and respect for his parents. God save you from 
similar distress ! '* 

And again : — 

" I did not know I had cared so much for anybody ; but 
the habit of providing for human beings, and watching over 
them for so many years, generates a fund of affection, of the 
magnitude of which I was not aware." 

Sixteen years later, when he lay dying and half- 
conscious, the cry " Douglas, Douglas ! " was constantly 
on his lips. 

The prebendal stall at Bristol carried with it the 
incumbency of Halberton, near Tiverton ; and Sydney 
Smith exchanged the living of Foston for that of 
Combe Florey in Somerset, which could be held 
conjointly with Halberton. On the 14th of July 1829 

1 " Having become a King's Scholar, the hardships and cru- 
elties he suffered, as a junior boy, from his fag-master, were such 
as at one time very nearly forced us to remove him from the 
school. He was taken home for a short period, to recover from 
his bruises, and restore his eye. His first act, on becoming Cap- 
tain himself, was to endeavour to ameliorate the condition of the 
juniors, and to obtain additional comforts for them from the Head 
Master." — From Mrs. Sydney Smith's Journal. 



132 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. 

he wrote from the " Sacred Valley of Flowers," as he 
loved to call it : — 

"I am extremely pleased with Combe Florey, and pro- 
nounce it to be a very pretty place in a very beautiful 
country. The house I shall make decently convenient." 

"I need not say how my climate is improved. The 
neighbourhood much the same as all other neighbourhoods. 
Red wine and white, soup and fish, commonplace dulness 
and prejudice, bad wit and good-nature. I am, after my 
manner, making my place perfect: and have twenty-eight 
people constantly at work." 

" I am going on fighting with bricklayers and carpenters, 
and shall ultimately make a very pretty place and a very 
good house." " I continue to be delighted with the country. 
My parsonage will be perfection. The harvest is got in 
without any rain. The Cider is such an enormous crop, that 
it is sold at ten shillings a hogshead ; so that a human 
creature may lose his reason for a penny." 

" Luttrell came over for a day, from whence I know not, 
but I thought not from good pastures ; at least, he had not 
his usual soup-and-pattie look. There was a forced smile 
upon his countenance, which seemed to indicate plain roast 
and boiled; and a sort of apple-pudding depression, as if 
he had been staying with a clergyman. . . . He was very 
agreeable, but spoke too lightly, I thought, of veal soup. 1 
took him aside, and reasoned the matter with him, but in 
vain; to speak the truth, Luttrell is not steady in his 
judgments on dishes. Individual failures with him soon 
degenerate into generic objections, till, by some fortunate 
accident, he eats himself into better opinions. A person of 
more calm reflection thinks not only of what he is consuming 
at that moment, but of the soups of the same kind he has 
met with in a long course of dining, and which have gradu- 
ally and justly elevated the species. I am perhaps making 
too much of this ; but the failures of a man of sense are 
always painful." 

One of the chief features in the restored Kectory of 



v.] co:mbe florey 133 

Combe Florey was a library, twenty-eight feet long 
and eight high, ending in a bay-window supported by 
pillars, and looking into a brilliant garden. This room 
had been made by " throwing a pantry, a passage, and 
a shoe-hole together.'^ Three sides of it were covered 
with books. "No furniture so charming as books," 
said Sydney, " even if you never open them, or read a 
single word." He passionately loved light and colour, 
sunshine and flowers ; and all his books were bound 
in the most vivid blues and reds. " What makes a fire 
so pleasant is that it is a live thing in a dead room." 
A visitor thus describes him at his literary work : — 

" At a large table in the bay-window, with his desk before 
him — on one end of this table a case, something like a small 
deal music-stand, filled with manuscript books — on the other 
a large deal tray, filled with a leaden ink-stand, containing ink 
enough for a county ; a magnifying glass ; a carpenter's rule ; 
several large steel pens, which it was high treason to touch ; 
a glass bowl full of shot and water, to clean these precious 
pens ; and some red tape, which he called ' one of the 
grammars of life'; a measuring line, and various other 
articles, more useful than ornamental. At this writing 
establishment, unique of its kind, he could turn his mind 
with equal facility, in company or alone, to any subject, 
whether of business, study, politics, instruction, or amuse- 
ment, and move the minds of his hearers to laughter or tears 
at his pleasure." 

The daily life at Combe Florey was eminently 
patriarchal. He lived surrounded by children, grand- 
children, and friends ; chatting with the poor, comfort- 
ing the sick, and petting the babies of the village. 
Old and young alike he doctored with extraordinary 
vehemence and persistency. "As I don't shoot or 
hunt, it is my only rural amusement." He wrote to 



134 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. 

a friend — " The influenza to my great joy has appeared 
here, and I am in high medical practice." " This is 
the house to be ill in," he used to say. " I take it 
as a delicate compliment when my guests have a slight 
illness here. Come and see my apothecary's shop." 
The " shop " was a room filled on one side with drugs 
and on the other with groceries. " Life is a difficult 
thing in the country, I assure you, and it requires a 
good deal of forethought to steer the ship, when you 
live twelve miles from a lemon." 

The church of Combe Florey was described by 
Francis Jeffrey as "a horrid old barn." There the 
Kector performed two services a Sunday, celebrated 
the Holy Communion once a month, and preached his 
practical sermons, transcribed from his own execrable 
manuscript by a sedulous clerk. "I like," he said, " to 
look down upon my congregation — to fire into them. 
The common people say I am a bould preacher, for I 
like to have my arms free, and to thump the pulpit." 
A lady dressed in crimson velvet he welcomed with the 
words, " Exactly the colour of my preaching cushion ! 
I really can hardly keep my hands off you." 

An anonymous correspondent kindly furnishes me 
with this description of the Valley of Flowers as it was 
in more recent years : — 

" I visited Combe Florey, with camera and vasculum, in 
1893. It is one of the loveliest spots in that district of lovely 
villages, lying in the Vale of Taunton on the southern slope 
of the Quantocks. The parsonage is entirely unchanged: 
there is Sydney's study, a low-ceilinged room supported 
partly by pillars, level with the garden and opening into it. 
There is the old-fashioned fireplace by which he and his wife 
sate opposite each other in his last illness. ' Mrs. Sydney has 
eight distinct illnesses, and I have nine. We take something 



v.] REFORM 135 

every hour, and pass the mixture from one to the other.' 
Outside still grow his Conifers, a large Atlantic Cedar and a 
Deodara; unchanged too are the palings over which Jack and 
Jill 1 peered with antlered heads. Old villagers still talk of 
his medical dispensary, and of the care with which he drove 
round to collect and carry into Taunton their monthly 
deposits for the Savings Bank.'* 

Meanwhile, great events weve transacting themselves 
in the political world, and they had an important bear- 
ing on the tranquil life of Combe Morey. On the 4th 
of May 1830, Sydney Smith wrote from London to his 
wife in the country : — 

" The King is going downhill as before, but seems to be a 
long time in the descent. All kinds of intrigues are going on 
about change of Ministry, and all kinds of hopes and fears 
afloat. Nothing is more improbable than that I should be 
made a Bishop, and, if I ever had the opportunity, I am now, 
when far removed from it, decidedly of opinion that it would 
be the greatest act of folly and absurdity to accept it — to live 
with foolish people, to do foolish and formal things all day, 
to hold my tongue, or to twist it into conversation unnatural 
to me." 

King George iv. died on the 26th of June. The 
accession of William iv., who was supposed to have 
some tendencies towards Whiggism, greatly stimulated 
the demand for Parliamentary Reform ; and the revo- 
lution in France, which dethroned Charles x., gave a 
strong impetus to the democratic forces in England. 
Parliament was dissolved on the 24th of July. On 
the 14th of August Charles Greville wrote, " The elec- 
tions are still going against the Government, and the 
signs of the times are all for reform and retrench- 
ment, and against slavery.'^ In writing to congratu- 

1 Two donkeys, which were disguised as deer for the astonish- 
ment of visitors. 



136 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. 

late a young Eoman Catholic who had been elected 
for Carlislcj Sydney Smith said — 

" I rejoice in the temple which has been reared to Tolera- 
tion ; and I am proud that I worked as a bricklayer's labourer 
at it — without pay, and with the enmity and abuse of those 
who were unfavourable to its construction." ^ 

The new Parliament met on the 26th of October. 
On the 2nd of November, in the debate on the Address, 
the Duke of Wellington made a vehement declaration 
against Keform. This was the signal for an immense 
outcry. There were mobs and riots everywhere. The 
King's projected visit to the City on Lord Mayor's 
Day was abandoned. The Tory Government were 
beaten on a motion relating to the new Civil List. 
'' Never was any Administration so completely and 
so suddenly destroyed ; and, I believe, entirely by 
the Duke's declaration." Lord Grey^ became Prime 
Minister, as the head of a Whig administration pledged 
to Eeform. Soon afterwards Sydney Smith wrote to 
a friend — 

" I think Lord Grey will give me some preferment if he 
stays in long enough ; but the upper parsons live vindictively, 
and evince their aversion to a Whig Ministry by an improved 
health." 

The Reform Bill was brought in on the 1st of March 
1831. Sydney thought it " a magnificent measure, as 
wise as it is bold." Meetings of Reformers were held 
all over the country to support it. Such a meeting 
was held at Taunton on the 9th of March, and the 
Rector of Combe Florey attended and spoke. 

" This," he said, " is the greatest measure which has ever 

1 The Roman Catholic Emaucipation Bill had become law ou the 
13th of April 1829. 

2 Charles, 2ud Earl Grey (17Gi-1845). 



v.] REFORM 137 

been before Parliament in my time, and the most pregnant 
with good or evil to the country; and, though I seldom meddle 
with political meetings, I could not reconcile it to my con- 
science to be absent from this. Every year for this half century 
the question of Reform has been pressing upon us, till it has 
swelled up at last into this great and awful combination; so 
that almost every City and every Borough in England are at 
this moment assembled for the same purpose and are doing 
the same thing we are doing." 

A great part of the controversy turned on the dis- 
franchisement of the "Pocket Boroughs," and this was a 
subject which immediately suggested a happy apologue : 

" These very same politicians are now looking in an agony 
of terror at the disfranchisement of Corporations containing 
twenty or thirty persons, sold to their representatives, w'ho 
are themselves perhaps sold to the Government : and to put 
an end to these enormous abuses is called Corporation rohhery, 
and there are some persons wild enough to talk of compensa- 
tion. This principle of compensation you will consider perhaps, 
in the following instance, to have been carried as far as sound 
discretion permits. When I was a young man, the place in 
England I remember as most notorious for highwaymen and 
their exploits was Finchley Common, near the metropolis ; 
but Finchley Common, in the progress of improvement, came 
to be enclosed, and the highwaymen lost by these means the 
opportunity of exercising their gallant vocation. I remember 
a friend of mine proposed to draw up for them a petition to 
the House of Commons for compensation, which ran in this 
manner — ' We, your loyal highwaymen of Finchley Common 
and its neighbourhood, having at great expense laid in a stock 
of blunderbusses, pistols, and other instruments for plunder- 
ing the public, and finding ourselves impeded in the exercise 
of our calling by the said enclosure of the said Common of 
Finchley, humbly petition your Honourable House will be 
pleased to assign to us such compensation as your Honourable 
House in its wisdom and justice may think fit.' — Gentlemen, 
I must leave the application to you. . . . 



138 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. 

" The greater part of human improvements, I am sorry to 
say, are made after war, tunmlt, bloodshed, and civil commo- 
tion : mankind seem to object to every species of gratuitous 
happiness, and to consider every advantage as too cheap, 
which is not purchased by some calamity. I shall esteem it 
as a singular act of God's providence, if this great nation, 
guided by these warnings of history, not waiting till tumult 
for Reform, nor trusting Reform to the rude hands of the 
lowest of the people, shall amend their decayed institutions at 
a period when they are ruled by a popular monarch, guided 
by an upright minister, and blessed with profound peace." 

On the 22nd of March the Second Eeading was 
carried by a majority of one. But directly afterwards 
the Government was defeated on an amendment in 
Committee, and promptly appealed to the country. 
Parliament was dissolved on the 23rd of April. " Bold 
King ! bold Ministers ! '^ wrote Sydney on the 25th. 
Popular feeling was now really roused. "The Bill, 
the whole Bill, and nothing but the Bill '^ was the 
war-cry from Caithness to Cornwall. Lord John 
Russell, who had brought the Bill into Parliament, 
was the hero of the hour. He contested Devonshire 
at the General Election, and Sydney, who had a vote 
for the county, met him at Exeter. — 

" The people along the road were very much disappointed 
by his smallness. I told them he was nmch larger before the 
Bill was thrown out, but was reduced by excessive anxiety 
about the people. This brought tears into their eyes ! " 

At this juncture Sydney composed (and published in 
the name of an imaginary Mr. Dyson), a " Speech to 
the Freeholders on Reform." — 

"Stick to the Bill — it is your Magna Charta, and your 
Runnymede. King John made a present to the Barons. 
King William has made a similar present to you. Never 



v.] REFORM 139 

mind common qualities, good in common times. If a man 
does not vote for the Bill, he is miclean — the plague-spot is 
upon him — push him into the lazaretto of the last century, 
with WetherelP and Sadler ^ — purify the air before you 
approach him — bathe your hands in Chloride of Lime, i£ 
you have been contaminated by his touch. . . . 

" The thing I cannot, and will not bear, is this ; — what 
right has this Lord, or that Marquis, to buy ten seats in 
Parliament, in the shape of Boroughs, and then to make laws 
to govern me? And how are these masses of power re-distri- 
buted? The eldest son of my Lord is just come from Eton 
— he knows a good deal about ^Eneas and Dido, Apollo and 
Daphne — and that is all ; and to this boy his father gives a 
six-hundredth part of the power of making laws, as he would 
give him a horse or a double-barrelled gun. Then Vellum, 
the steward, is put in — an admirable man ; — he has raised tlie 
estates — watched the progress of the family Road-and-Canal 
Bills — and Vellum shall help to rule over the people of Eng- 
land. A neighbouring country gentleman, Mr. Plumpkin, 
hunts with my Lord — opens him a gate or tw^o, while the 
hounds are running — dines with my Lord — agrees with my 
Lord — wishes he could rival the South-Down sheep of my 
Lord — and upon Plumpkin is conferred a portion of the 
government. Then there is a distant relation of the same 
name, in the County JNIilitia, with white teeth, who calls up 
the carriage at the Opera, and is always wishing O'Connell 
was hanged, drawn, and quartered — then a barrister, who 
has written an article in the Quarterly^ and is very likely to 
speak, and refute M'CuUoch ; and these five people, in whose 
nomination I have no more agency than I have hi the nomi- 
nation of the toll-keepers of the Bosphorus, are to make laws 
for me and my family — to put their hands in my purse, and 
to sway the future destinies of this country ; and w^hen the 
neighbours step in, and beg permission to say a few words 
before these persons are chosen, there is an universal cry of 

iSir Charles Wetherell (1770-1846), Attorney-General, and 
Recorder of Bristol. 

2 Michael Thomas Sadler (1780-1835), M.P. for Newark. 



140 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. 

ruin, confusion, and destruction — 'We have become a great 
people under Vellum and Plumpkin — under Vellum and 
Plumpkin our ships have covered the ocean — under Vellum 
and Plumpkin our armies have secured the strength of the 
Hills — to turn out Vellum and Plumpkin is not Reform, 
but Revolution.' " 

It was said by the opponents of the Bill that th.e 
existing system worked well. — 

" Work well ! How does it work well, when every human 
being in-doors and out (with the exception of the Duke of 
Wellington) says it must be made to work better, or it will 
soon cease to work at all? It is little short of absolute 
nonsense to call a government good, which the great mass 
of Englishmen would, before twenty years were elapsed, if 
Reform were denied, rise up and destroy. Of what use have 
all the cruel laws been of Perceval, Eldon, and Castlereagh, 
to extinguish Reform ? Lord John Russell, and his abettors, 
would have been committed to gaol twenty years ago for half 
only of his present Reform ; and now relays of the people 
would drag them from London to Edinburgh ; at which latter 
city we are told, by Mr. Dundas, that there is no eagerness 
for Reform. Five minutes before Moses struck the rock, this 
gentleman would have said that there was no eagerness for 
water. 

" There are two methods of making alterations : the one is 
to despise the applicants, to begin with refusing every conces- 
sion, then to relax by making concessions which are always 
too late ; by offering in 1831 what is then too late, but 
would have been cheerfully accepted in 1830 — gradually to 
O'Connellize the country, till at last, after this process has 
gone on for some time, the alarm becomes too great, and 
every thing is conceded in hurry and confusion. In the mean 
time fresh conspiracies have been hatched by the long delay, 
and no gratitude is expressed for what has been extorted by 
fear. In this way peace was concluded with America, and 
Emancipation granted to the Catholics ; and in this way the 
War of Complexions will be finished in the West Indies. The 



v.] REFORM 141 

other method is, to see at a distance that the thing must be 
done, and to do it effectually, and at once ; to take it out of 
the hands of the common people, and to carry the measure in 
a manly liberal manner, so as to satisfy the great majority. 
The merit of this belongs to the administration of Lord Grey. 
He is the only jMinister I know of, who has begun a great 
measure in good time, conceded at the beginning of twenty 
years what would have been extorted at the end of it, and 
prevented that folly, violence, and ignorance, which emanate 
from a long denial and extorted concession of justice to great 
masses of human beings. I believe the question of Reform, 
or any dangerous agitation of it, is set at rest for thirty or 
forty years ; and this is an eternity in politics. 

" I am old and tired, — thank me for ending ; but one word 
more before I sit down. I am old, but I thank God I have 
lived to see more than my observations on human nature 
taught me I had any right to expect. I have lived to see an 
honest King, in whose word his ministers could trust. I have 
lived to see a King with a good heart, who, surrounded by 
nobles, thinks of common men ; who loves the great mass of 
English people, and wishes to be loved by them ; and who, in 
spite of clamour, interest, prejudice, and fear, has the manli- 
ness to carry these wise changes into immediate execution. 
Gentlemen, farewell ! Shout for the King ! " ^ 

Having done his best for the good cause in the 
country, Sydney Smith returned to London to watch, 
the results. On the 6tli of June Macaulay met him 
at dinner, and writes thus next day : — 

" Sydney Smith leaves London on the 20th — the day before 
Parliament meets for business. I advised him to stay and see 
something of his friends, who would be coming up to London. 
' My flock ! ' said this good shepherd, ' my dear sir, remember 
my flock ! 

" The hungry sheep look up and are not fed." ' 

1 This is the " Speech respecting the Reform Bill " in Sydney 
Smith's Collected Works. 



142 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. 

"... He begged me to come and see hira at Combe Florey. 
* There I am, sir, in a delightful parsonage, about which I 
care a great deal, and a delightful country, about which I do 
not care a straw.' " 

When the new House of Commons assembled, it was 
found to contain a great majority of Reformers. A 
fresh Bill was introduced, and passed the Second 
Reading, by a majority of 136, on the 8th of July. 
While it was ploughing its way through Com- 
mittee, the Coronation of William iv. took place 
on the 8th of September. The solemnity was made 
an occasion for public rejoicings in the country, 
and loyalty was judiciously reinforced by the sugges- 
tion that the King was, in this great controversy, on 
the same side as his people. At a meeting at Taunton, 
Sydney Smith spoke as follows : — 

" I am particularly happy to assist on this occasion, because 
I think that the accession of the present King is a marked 
and important era in English history. Another coronation 
has taken place since I have been in the world, but I never 
assisted at its celebration. I saw in it a change of masters, 
not a change of system. I did not understand the joy which 
it occasioned. I did not feel it, and I did not counterfeit 
what I did not feel. 

" I think very differently of the accession of his present 
Majesty. I believe I see in that accession a great probability 
of serious improvement, and a great increase of public happi- 
ness. The evils which have been long complained of by bold 
and intelligent men are now universally admitted. The 
public feeling, which has been so often appealed to, is now 
intensely excited. The remedies which have so often been 
called for are now, at last, vigorously, wisely, and faithfully 
applied. I admire, gentlemen, in the present King, his love 
of peace — I admire in him his disposition to economy, and I 
admire in him, above all, his faithful and honourable conduct 



v.] REFORM 143 

to those who happen to be his ministers. He was, I believe, 
quite as faithful to the Duke of Wellington as to Lord Grey, 
and would, I have no doubt, be quite as faithful to the politi- 
cal enemies of Lord Grey (if he thought fit to employ them) 
as he is to Lord Grey himself. There is in this reign no 
secret influence, no double ministry — on whomsoever he 
confers the office, to him he gives that confidence without 
which the office cannot be holden with honour, nor executed 
with effect. He is not only a peaceful King, and an eco- 
nomical King, but he is an honest King. So far, I believe, 
every individual of this company will go with me. 

" There is an argument I have often heard, and that is this 
— Are we to be afraid ? — is this measure to be carried by 
intimidation ? — is the House of Lords to be overawed ? But 
this style of argument proceeds from confounding together 
two sets of feelings which are entirely distinct — personal 
fear and political fear. If I am afraid of voting against this 
bill, because a mob may gather about the House of Lords — 
because stones may be flung at my head — because my house 
may be attacked by a mob, I am a poltroon, and unfit to 
meddle with public affairs. But I may rationally be afraid 
of producing great public agitation ; I may be honourably 
afraid of flinging people into secret clubs and conspiracies — 
I may be wisely afraid of making the aristocracy hateful to 
the great body of the people. This surely has no more to do 
with fear than a loose identity of name ; it is in fact prudence 
of the highest order; the deliberate reflexion of a wise man, 
who does not like what he is going to do, but likes still less 
the consequences of not doing it, and who of two evils chooses 
the least. 

"There are some men much afraid of what is to happen ; 
my lively hope of good is, I confess, mingled with very little 
apprehension; but of one thing I must be candid enough to 
say that I am much afraid, and that is of the opinion now 
increasing, that the people are become indifferent to reform ; 
and of th at opinion I am afraid, because I believe in an evil hour 
it may lead some misguided members of the Upper House of 



144 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. 

Parliament to vote against the bill. As for the opinion it- 
self, I hold it in the utmost contempt. The people are waiting 
in virtuous patience for the completion of the bill, because 
they know it is in the hands of men who do not mean to de- 
ceive them. I do not believe they have given up one atom of 
reform — I do not believe that a great people were ever before 
so firmly bent upon any one measure. I put it to any man 
of common sense, whether he believes it possible, after the 
King and Parliament have acted as they have done, that the 
people will ever be content with much less than the present 
bill contains. If a contrary principle be acted upon, and the 
bill attempted to be got rid of altogether, I confess I tremble 
for the consequences, which I believe will be of the worst 
and most painful description; and this I say deliberately, 
after the most diligent and extensive enquiry. Upon that 
diligent enquiry I repeat again my firm conviction, that the 
desire of reform has increased, not diminished; that the 
present repose is not indifference, but the calmness of vic- 
tory, and the tranquillity of success. When I see all the 
wishes and appetites of created beings changed, — when I 
see an eagle, that, after long confinement, has escaped into 
the air, come back to his cage and his chain, — when I see 
the emancipated negro asking again for the hoe which has 
broken down his strength, and the lash which has tortured 
his body — I will then, and not till then, believe that the 
English people will return to their ancient degradation — 
that they will hold out their repentant hands for those mana- 
cles which at this moment lie broken into links at their feet." 

This fine speech was delivered at a crucial moment of 
the speaker's personal fortunes. Whether he would 
or would not have made a good bishop, and whether 
the Whigs were or were not justly chargeable with 
cowardice ^ in not having raised him to the Episcopal 

iLord Houghton wrote in 1873 — "I heard Lord Melbourne 
say, 'Sydney Smith has done more for the Whigs than all the 
clergy put together, and our not making him a bishop was mere 
cowardice.' " 



v.] PROMOTION 145 

Bench, are disputable points. It seems certain, from 
his own declarations, that in later life he would have 
declined the honour; but there was a time when it 
might have been offered, and would probably have been 
accepted. When he feared that England might be 
dragged into war with France on behalf of Spain, he 
composed a skit purporting to be a Protest entered on 
the Journals of the Lords by the Bishop of Worcester, 
and signed it ^' Sydney Vigorn." ^ The Bishop of 
Worcester 2 died on the 5th of September 1831, and 
Lord Grey gave the vacant mitre to a Tory.^ 
Sydney's emotions are not recorded; but on the 
10th of September Lord Grey offered him a Residen- 
tiary Canonry of St. Paul's — "a snug thing, let me 
tell you, being worth full £2000 a year." It was 
not an overwhelming reward for such long and such 
brilliant seryice to the causes which Lord Grey repre- 
sented, but it was a recognition — and it was enough. 
He was installed on the 27th of September, and on 
the day of his installation he wrote to a friend — " It 
puts me at my ease for life. I asked for nothing — 
never did anything shabby to procure preferment. 
These are pleasing recollections." 



1 The archaic signature of the Bishops of Worcester. Mrs. 
Austin transcribes it "Vigour," and puts the Protest among 
the letters of 1831. Sir Spencer Walpole points out that it 
probably belongs to the year 1823, when Lord Ellenborough 
moved an Address to the Crown in favour of intervention in 
Spain. 

2 Ffolliot H. W. Cornewall (1754-1831). 

8 Robert James Carr (1774-1841). It was said that this 
appointment was due to a promise made by George iv., whom 
Dr. Carr, formerly Vicar of Brighton, had attended in his last 
illness. 

L 



146 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. v. 

Soon afterwards, he was presented on his appoint- 
ment, and met with a misadventure at the Palace. — 

" I went to Court, and, horrible to relate, with strings to 
my shoes instead of buckles — not from Jacobinism, but 
ignorance. I saw two or three Tory lords looking at me with 
dismay, was informed by the Clerk of the Closet of my sin, 
and, gathering my sacerdotal petticoats about me (like a lady 
conscious of thick ankles) I escaped further observation." 



CHAPTER VI 



SIXGLETOX COLLECTED WOEKS 

Meanwhile the Reform Bill had passed the House of 
Commons and was sent up to the House of Lords. 
In the summer, Sydney Smith had written to Lord 
Grey — " You may be sure that any attempt of the 
Lords to throw out the Bill will be the signal for 
the most energetic resistance from one end of the 
kingdom to another." The Lords faced the risk, and 
threw out the Bill on the 8th of October 1831. 

Sydney's prophecy was promptly justified, and the 
most threatening violence and disorder broke out in 
the great centres of industrial population. Whigs 
and Radicals alike rallied, as one man, to the cause of 
Reform. On the 11th of October a public meeting 
was held at Taunton to protest against the action of 
the Lords and express unabated confidence in the 
Government. It was on this occasion that S3'dney 
Smith made the most famous of his political speeches. 
He deplored the collision between the two Houses of 
Parliament, but he was not the least alarmed about 
the fate of the Bill. The Lords were no match for 
the forces arrayed against them. — 

"As for the possibility of the House of Lords preventing 
147 



148 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. 

for long a reform of Parliament, I hold it to be the most 
absurd notion that ever entered into the human imagination. 
I do not mean to be disrespectful, but the attempt of the 
Lords to stop the progress of Reform reminds me very 
forcibly of the great storm at Sidmouth, and of the conduct 
of the excellent Mrs. Partington on that occasion. In the 
winter of 1821, there set in a great flood upon that town — the 
tide rose to an incredible height — the waves rushed in upon 
the houses, and everything was threatened with destruction. 
In the midst of this sublime and terrible storm. Dame Part- 
ington, who lived upon the beach, was seen at the door of her 
house with mop and pattens, trundling her mop, squeezing 
out the sea-water, and vigorously pushing away the Atlantic 
Ocean. The Atlantic was roused. Mrs. Partington's spirit 
was up ; but I need not tell you that the contest was unequal. 
The Atlantic Ocean beat Mrs. Partington. She was excellent 
at a slop, or a puddle, but she should not have meddled with 
a tempest. Gentlemen, be at your ease — be quiet and steady. 
You will beat Mrs. Partington." 

Fifty years later, an eye-witness tbns described the 
scene: — "The introduction of the Partington storm 
was startling and unexpected. As he recounted in 
felicitous terms the adventures of the excellent dame, 
suiting the action to the word with great dramatic 
skill, he commenced trundling his imaginary mop and 
sweeping back the intrusive waves of the Atlantic with 
an air of resolute determination and an appearance 
of increasing temper. The scene was realistic in the 
extreme, and was too much for the gravity of the most 
serious. The house rose, the people cheered, and tears 
of superabundant laughter trickled down the cheeks 
of fair women and veteran reformers." ^ 

This was his last public act in connexion with Par- 
liamentary Eeform ; but the keenness of his interest 

1 R. A. Kinglake, quoted by Mr. Stuart Reid. 



VI.] ST. PAUL'S 149 

remained unabated till the day was won. On the 
12tli of December 1831, the Reform Bill was brought in 
a third time. It again passed the House of Commons, 
and was again threatened with destruction in the 
Lords. Sydney Smith wrote thus to Lord Grey : — 

" I take it for granted you are prepared to make Peers, to 
force the measure if it fail again, and I would have this in- 
tention half-officially communicated in all the great towns 
before the Bill was brought in. If this is not done — I mean, 
if Peers are not made — there will be a general convulsion, 
ending in a complete revolution. ... If you wish to be 
happy three months hence, create Peers. If you wish to 
avoid an old age of sorrow and reproach, create Peers." 

Acting on this counsel, Lord Grey obtained the 
King's written consent to the creation of as many peers 
as were required to carry the Bill. " I am for forty," 
wrote Sydney, "to make things safe in Committee." 
But this extreme remedy was not required. When it 
became known that" the King had given his consent, 
the opposition collapsed, and the Bill received the 
Eoyal Assent on the 7th of June 1832. It was, as 
the Duke of Wellington said, a revolution by due 
course of law. 

Henceforward Sydney Smith appears rather as a 
supporter of things as they are, than as a promoter of 
political or ecclesiastical change. Indeed there are 
signs which seem to show that his stock of reforming 
zeal had already run low. " The New Beer Bill ^ has 
begun its operations. Everybody is drunk. Those 
who are not singing are sprawling. The Sovereign 
People are in a beastly state." He was now past 

1 The Beer-house Act, 1830, allowed any one to retail beer, on 
merely taking out an excise-license. 



150 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. 

sixty, and a spirit of amiable self-indulgence was 
creeping over him. — 

"I love liberty, but hope it can be so managed that I shall 
have soft beds, good dinners, fine linen, etc., for the rest of my 
life. I am too old to fight or to suffer." " I am tired of 
liberty and revolution ! Where is it to end ? Are all 
political agglutinations to be un glued ? Are we prepared for 
a second Heptarchy, and to see the King of Sussex figliting 
with the Emperor of Essex, or marrying the Dowager Queen 
of Hampshire ? " 

Just before the first elections under the Eeform Act, 
he wrote to a Scotch friend : — 

"AVhat oceans of absurdity and nonsense will the new 
liberties of Scotland disclose ! Yet this is better than the 
old infamous jobbing, and the foolocracy under which you 
have so long laboured." 

Sydney Smith's first term of official duty at St. Paul's 
began on the 1st of February 1832. On the eve of 
the new year he wrote to his married daughter : — 

" We are debating how to come up to town, and how to 
make a Stage Coach compatible with Saba's aristocracy and 
dignity. The Coach sets off from Taunton at four o'clock. 
It is then dark. I recommend her hurrying in three minutes 
before the Coach departs with her face covered up. But there 
is a maiden lady who knows us and who lives opposite the 
Coach. I have promised to keep her in conversation whilst 
Saba steps in. Once in, all chance of detection is over. 

" P.S. — We think Miss Y has discovered us, for, upon 

meeting her in Taunton, she spoke of the Excellence of Public 
Conveyances. I said it was a fine day, and, conscious of guilt, 
retired." 

The removal to London was safely accomplished, 
and on the 29th of January he wrote : — 

"I drove all this morning with Lady Holland. I had 
refused two or three times last week, but, as a good deal is 



VI.] ST. PAUL'S 151 

due to old friendship, I wrote word that, if she would accept 
the company of a handsome young clergyman, I knew of one 
who was much at her service. She was very ill. I preached to 
her, not ' of Temperance and Righteousness and Judgement 
to come,' but said nothing of the two last and confined myself 
to the first topic. ' Lay aside pepper, and brandy and water, 
and baume de vie. Prevent the evil instead of curing it. A 
single mutton chop, a glass of toast and water ' — here she 
cried and I stopj)ed ; but she began sobbing, and I was 
weak enough to allow two glasses of sherry — on which she 
recovered." 

A few days later he wrote to his old friend Lady 
Morley ^ : — 

'• I have taken possession of my preferment. The house is 
in Amen Corner, — an awkward name on a card, and an 
awkward annunciation to the coachman on leaving any 
fashionable mansion.^ I find too (sweet discovery !) that I 
give a dinner every Sunday, for three months in the year, to 
six clergymen and six singing-men, at one o'clock. Do me 
the favour to drop in as Mrs. ]\Iorley." 

It soon became evident that the Whig Government, 
flushed with its triumph over Toryism, intended to 
lay reforming hands upon the Church,^ and the newly- 
fledged dignitary was alarmed. On the 22nd of 
December 1832 he wrote — 

"I see Lord Grey, the Chancellor, and the Archbishop of 
Canterbury have had a meeting, which I suppose has decided 
the fate of the Church." " Do you want a butler or respect- 
able-looking groom of the chambers? I shall be happy to 

1 Frances Talbot, wife of John, 1st Earl of Morley. 

2 As a matter of fact he lived at 33 Charles Street, and subse- 
quently at 56 Green Street. 

3 This intention gave rise to the "Oxford Movement." Keble 
thought that the time had come when " scoundrels must be called 
scoundrels." His Sermon on " National Apostasy " was preached 
on the lith of July 1833. 



152 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. 

serve you in either capacity ; it is time for the clergy to look 
out. I have also a cassock and stock of sermons to dispose 
of, dry and fit for use." " I am for no more movements : 
they are not relished by Canons of St. Paul's. When I say, 
'no more movements,' however, I except the case of the 
Universities; which, I think, ought to be immediately invaded 
with Enquirers and Commissioners. They are a crying evil." 
" Do not imagine I am going to rat. I am a thoroughly 
honest, and, I will say, liberal person, but have never given 
way to that puritanical feeling of the Whigs against dining 
with Tories. 

' Tory and Whig in turns shall be my host, 
I taste no politics in boiPd and roast.' " 

In declining an invitation to dinner he wrote : — 

" On one day of the year, the Canons of St. Paul's divide 
a little money — an inadequate recompense for all the troubles 
and anxieties they undergo. This day is, unfortunately for 
me, that on which you have asked me (the 25th of March), 
when we all dine together, endeavouring to forget for a few 
moments, by the aid of meat and wine, the sorrows and 
persecutions of the Church." 

Of Sydney Smith's official relations with. St. Paul's 
abundant traces are still to be found. He took a 
leading part in the business of the Chapter. Dean 
Milman^ wrote: — "I find traces of him in every 
particular of Chapter affairs ; and, on every occasion 
where his hand appears, I find stronger reasons for 
respecting his sound judgment, knowledge of business, 
and activity of mind ; above all the perfect fidelity of 
his stewardship. . . . His management of the affairs 
of St. Paul's (for at one time he seems to have been 
the manager) only commenced too late and terminated 
too soon." 

A Select Committee of the House of Commons was 

1 Henry Hart Milman (1791-1868). 



VI.] ST. PAUL'S 153 

appointed in 1841 to inquire into the condition of 
National Monuments. One fragment of Sydney 
Smith's evidence is quaint enough to be recalled. — 

"I hope I leave the Committee with this very decided 
impression, that, in such an immense town as this, free 
admission into the Cathedral would very soon inflict upon that 
Cathedral the infamy of being a notorious resort for all bad 
characters; it would cease to be frequented as a place of 
worship, and the whole purpose for which it exists destroyed ; 
and that to this the payment operates as a decided check." 

When examined before the same Committee, the 
Surveyor to the Cathedral testified that there '• had 
been no superintendence at all comparable to that of 
Mr. Sydney Smith " ; that he had warmed the Library 
and rebound the books ; that he had insured the fabric 
against fire ; and had " brought the New Kiver into 
the Cathedral by mains." The Verger testified that 
the monuments had fallen into a dreadful state of 
decay and disfigurement, and that there were " twenty 
thousand names scratched on the font " ; but that now 
by Mr. Smith's orders everything had been repaired, 
cleaned, and set in order. 

As regards Sydney Smith's preaching, testimony 
is equally explicit. He said of himself, in a letter 
stating his claims to ecclesiastical preferment, " I am 
distinguished as a preacher," and this seems to have 
been no more than the truth. George Ticknor, writing 
in 1835, said that he had heard from Sydney "by 
far the best sermon that I have heard in England." 
Charles Greville wrote : — " He is very good ; manner 
impressive, voice sonorous and agreeable; rather 
familiar, but not offensively so." Mrs. Austin,^ who 

1 Born Sarah Taylor (1793-1867). 



154 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. 

afterwards edited his Letters, writes : — " The choir ^ 
was densely filled. . . . The moment he appeared in 
the pulpit, all the weight of his duty, all the authority 
of his office, were written on his countenance ; and, 
without a particle of affectation, his whole demeanour 
bespoke the gravity of his purpose." 

This exactly corresponds with the impression of a 
listener to his famous sermon on Toleration, in Bristol 
Cathedral. "Never did anybody to my mind look 
more like a High Churchman, as he walked up the 
aisle to the altar — there was an air of so much proud 
dignity in his appearance." 

Perhaps this account of Sydney Smith's relations 
with St. Paul's Cathedral cannot be better concluded 
than with some extracts from the noble sermon which 
he preached there on the occasion of Queen Victoria's 
accession. It is a remarkably fine instance of his 
rhetorical manner. It reveals an ardent and sagacious 
patriotism. It breathes a spirit of fatherly interest 
which excellently becomes a minister of religion, 
glancing, from the close of a long life spent in public 
affairs, at the possibilities, at once awful and splendid, 
which lay before the Girl-Queen. 

The preacher, in his opening paragraphs, briefly 
announces his theme. His starting-point is the death 
of the King. — 

" From the throne to the tomb — wealth, splendour, flattery, 
all gone ! The look of favour — the voice of power, no more ; 
— the deserted palace — the wretched monarch on his funeral 
bier — the mourners ready — the dismal march of death pre- 
pared. Who are we, and what are we ? and for what has God 

1 At that period there were no sermons nnder the Dome. 



VI.] ST. PAUL'S 155 

made us? and why are we doomed to this frail and unquiet 
existence ? Who does not feel all this ? in whose heart does it 
not provoke appeal to, and dependence on, God ? before whose 
eyes does it not bring the folly and the nothingness of all 
things human ? " 

He pauses to pay a tribute to the honesty and 
patriotism of William iv., and then proceeds : — 

" But the world passes on, and a new order of things arises. 
Let us take a short view of those duties which devolve upon 
the young Queen, whom Providence has placed over us : what 
ideas she ought to form of her duties ; and on what points 
she should endeavour to place the glories of her reign, 

" First and foremost, I think the new Queen should bend 
her mind to the very serious consideration of educating her 
people. Of the importance of this I think no reasonable 
doubt can exist ; it does not in its effects keep pace with the 
exaggerated expectations of its injudicious advocates ; but it 
presents the best chance of national improvement. 

" Reading and writing are mere increase of power. They 
may be turned, I admit, to a good or a bad purpose ; but for 
several years of his life the child is in your hands, and you may 
give to that power what bias you please. Thou shalt not kill 

— Thou shalt not steal — Thou shalt not bear false witness : 

— by how many fables, by how much poetry, by how many 
beautiful aids of imagination, may not the fine morality of the 
Sacred Scriptures be engraven on the minds of the young ? I 
believe the arm of the assassin may be often stayed by the 
lessons of his early life. When I see the village school, and 
the tattered scholars, and the aged master or mistress teaching 
the mechanical art of reading or writing, and thinking that 
they are teaching that alone, I feel that the aged instructor is 
protecting life, insuring property, fencing the altar, guarding 
the throne, giving space and liberty to all the fine powers of 
man, and lifting him up to his own place in the order of 
Creation. 

" There are, I am sorry to say, many countries in Europe 
which have taken the lead of England in the great business 



156 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. 

of education, and it is a thoroughly commendable and legiti- 
mate object of ambition in a Sovereign to overtake them. 
The names, too, of malefactors, and the nature of their crimes, 
are subjected to the Sovereign ; — how is it possible that a 
Sovereign, with the fine feelings of youth, and with all the 
gentleness of her sex, should not ask herself, whether the 
human being whom she dooms to death, or at least does not 
rescue from death, has been properly warned in early youth of 
the horrors of that crime, for which his life is forfeited — 'Did 
he ever receive any education at all? — did a father and a 
mother watch over him? — was he brought to places of wor- 
ship? — was the Word of God explained to him? — was the 
Book of Knowledge opened to him? — Or am I, the fountain 
of mercy, the nursing-mother of my people, to send a forsaken 
wretch from the streets to the scaffold, and to punish by 
unprincipled cruelty the evils of unprincipled neglect ? ' " 

From zeal for education, we go on to love of 
Peace. — 

" A second great object, which I hope will be impressed 
upon the mind of this Royal Lady, is a rooted horror of war 
— an earnest and passionate desire to keep her people in a 
state of profound peace. The greatest curse which can be 
entailed upon mankind is a state of war. All the atrocious 
crimes committed in years of peace — all that is spent in peace 
by the secret corruptions, or by the thoughtless extravagance, 
of nations — are mere trifles compared with the gigantic evils 
which stalk over the world in a state of war. God is forgotten 
in war — every principle of Christian charity trampled upon — 
human labour destroyed — human industry extinguished — you 
see the son, and the husband, and the brother, dying miserably 
in distant lands — you see the waste of human affections — you 
see the breaking of human hearts — you hear the shrieks of 
widows and children after the battle — and you walk over the 
mangled bodies of the wounded calling for death. I would 
say to that Royal child. Worship God by loving peace — it is 
not your humanity to pity a beggar by giving him food or 
raiment — / can do that ; that is the charity of the humble and 



VI.] ST. PAUL'S 157 

the unknown — widen you your heart for the more expanded 
miseries of mankind — pity the mothers of the peasantry who 
see their sons torn away from theu' families — pity your poor 
subjects crowded into hospitals, and calling in their last breath 
upon their distant country and their young Queen — pity the 
stupid, frantic folly of human beings who are always ready to 
tear each other to pieces, and to deluge the earth with each 
other's blood ; this is your extended humanity — and this the 
great field of your compassion. Extinguish in your heart the 
fiendish love of military glory, from which your sex does 
not necessarily exempt you, and to which the wickedness of 
flatterers may urge you. Say upon your death-bed, ' I have 
made few orphans in my reign — I have made few widows — 
my object has been peace. I have used all the weight of my 
character, and all the power of my situation, to check the 
irascible passions of mankind, and to turn them to the arts of 
honest industry. This has been the Christianity of my throne, 
and this the Gospel of my sceptre. In this way I have strove 
to worship my Eedeemer and my Jadge.' " 

True to his lifelong conviction, the preacher urges 
the sacredness of religious freedom. — 

" I hope the Queen will love the Xational Church, and pro- 
tect it ; but it must be impressed upon her mind that every 
sect of Christians have as perfect a right to the free exercise 
of their worship as the Church itself — that there must be 
no invasion of the privileges of the other sects, and no con- 
temptuous disrespect of their feelings — that the Altar is the 
very ark and citadel of Freedom. 

"Though I deprecate the bad effects of fanaticism, I 
earnestly pray that our young Sovereign may evince herself 
to be a person of deep religious feeling : what other cure has 
she for all the arrogance and vanity which her exalted position 
must engender ? for all the flattery and falsehood with which 
she must be surrounded ? for all the soul-corrupting homage 
with which she is met at every moment of her existence? 
what other cure than to cast herself down in darkness and 



158 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. 

solitude before God — to say that she is dust and ashes — and 
to call down the pity of the Almighty upon her difficult 
and dangerous life. This is the antidote of kings against the 
slavery and the baseness which surround them ; they should 
think often of death — and the folly and nothingness of the 
world, and they should humble their souls before the Master 
of masters, and the King of kings; praying to Heaven for 
wisdom and calm reflexion, and for that spirit of Christian 
gentleness which exalts command into an empire of justice, 
and turns obedience into a service of love." 

Thus he recapitulates and concludes : — 

" A young Queen, at that period of life which is commonly 
given up to frivolous amusement, sees at once the great 
principles by which she should be guided, and steps at once 
into the great duties of her station. The importance of 
educating the lower orders of the people is never absent from 
her mind ; she takes up this principle at the beginning of her 
life, and in all the change of servants, and in all the struggle 
of parties, looks to it as a source of permanent improvement. 
A great object of her affections is the preservation of peace ; 
she regards a state of war as the greatest of all human evils ; 
thinks that the lust of conquest is not a glory, but a bad 
crime ; despises the folly and miscalculations of war, and is 
willing to sacrifice every thing to peace but the clear honour 
of her land. 

" The patriot Queen, whom I am painting, reverences the 
National Church — frequents its worship, and regulates her 
faith by its precepts ; but she withstands the encroachments, 
and keeps down the ambition natural to establishments, and, 
by rendering the privileges of the Church compatible with the 
civil freedom of all sects, confers strength upon, and adds 
duration to, that wise and magnificent institution. And then 
this youthful Monarch, profoundly but wisely religious, dis- 
daining hypocrisy, and far .above the childish follies of false 
piety, casts herself upon God, and seeks from the Gospel of 
His blessed Son a path for her steps, and a comfort for her 
soul. Here is a picture which warms every English heart, and 



VI.] THE PARALLELOGRAM 159 

would bring all this congregation upon their bended knees 
before Almighty God to pray it may be realized. What limits 
to the glory and happiness of our native land, if the Creator 
should in His mercy have placed in the heart of this Royal 
AVoman the rudiments of wisdom and mercy ; and if, giving 
them time to expand, and to bless our children's children with 
her goodness, He should grant to her a long sojourning upon 
earth, and leave her to reign over us till she is well stricken 
in years ? What glory ! what happiness ! what joy ! what 
bounty of God ! I of course can only expect to see the be- 
ginning of such a splendid period : but, when I do see it, 
I shall exclaim with the pious Simeon, ' Lord, now lettest 
Thou Thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen 
Thy salvation.' " 

We turn now from ecclesiastical to social life. 
Though. Sydney Smith, still retained his beautiful 
Rectory of Combe Florey, and lived there a good 
deal in the summer, he spent more and more of his 
year in London. He held that the parallelogram 
between Oxford Street, Piccadilly, Eegent Street, 
and Hyde Park, " enclosed more intelligence and 
ability, to say nothing of wealth and beauty, than 
the world had ever collected in such a space before." 
He frankly admitted that the summer and the country 
had no charms for him. His sentiments on this head 
found poetical expression in a parody of Pai^adise Lost. 
He felt 

" As one who, long in rural hamlets pent, 
(Where squires and parsons deep potations make, 
With lengthen'd tale of fox, or timid hare, 
Or antler' d stag, sore vext by hound and horn), 
Forth issuing on a winter's morn, to reach 
In chaise or coach the London Babylon 
Remote, from each thing met conceives delight ; — 
Or cab, or car, or evening muffin-bell, 
Or lamps — each city-sight, each city-sound." 



160 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. 

" I do all I can to love the country, and endeavour to 
believe those poetical lies which I read in Rogers and others, 
on the subject ; which said deviations from truth were, by 
Eogers, all written in St. James's Place." " I look forward 
anxiously to the return of the bad weather, coal fires, and good 
society in a crowded city." " The country is bad enough 
in summer, but in winter it is a fit residence only for beings 
doomed to such misery for misdeeds in another state of exist- 
ence." " You may depend upon it, all lives lived out of Lon- 
don are mistakes, more or less grievous — but mistakes." 
" I shall not be sorry to be in town. I am rather tired of 
simple pleasures, bad reasoning, and worse cookery." 

His life in London, free from these kindred evils, 
was full of enjoyment. He dined out as often as 
he liked, and entertained his friends at breakfast, 
luncheon, and dinner. He admits that he ^^some- 
times talked a little," and ^' liked a hearty laugher." 

" I talk only the nonsense of the moment from the good 
humour of the moment, and nothing remains behind." 

" I like a little noise and nature, and a large party, very 
merry and happy." 

Here are some of his invitations : — 

" Will you come to a philosophical breakfast on Saturday ? 
— ten o'clock precisely ? Nothing taken for granted ! Every- 
thing (except the Thirty-Nine Articles) called in question." 

" I have a breakfast of philosophers to-morrow at ten 
punctually ; muffins and metaphysics, crumpets and con- 
tradiction. Will you come?" 

" Pray come and see me. I will give you very good mut- 
ton chops for luncheon,! seasoned with affectionate regard 
and respect." 

1 In 1825, after a visit to Lord Essex at Cassiobury, be noted 
with disapproval — " No hot luncheons." 



VI.] THE PAKALLELOGRAM 161 

" I give two dinners next week to the following persons, 
whom I enumerate, as I know Lady Georgiana loves a little 
gossip. First dinner — Lady Holland, Eastlake, Lord and 
Lady Monteagle, Luttrell, Lord Auckland, Lord Campbell, 
Lady Stratheden, Lady Dunstanville, Baring Wall, and 
Mr. Hope. Second dinner — Lady Charlemont, Lord Glenelg, 
Lord and Lady Denman, Lord and Lady Cottenham, Lord and 
Lady Langdale, Sir Charles Lemon, Mr. Hibbert, Landseer, 
and Lord Clarendon." 

This period is marked by one domestic incident 
which caused the Smiths lasting happiness. In the 
spring of 1834 their elder daughter, Saba, was married 
to Dr., afterwards Sir Henry, Holland. Sydney thus 
expressed his joy : — 

" The blessing of God be upon you both, dear children ; 
and be assured that it makes my old age much happier to 
have placed my daughter in the hands of so honourable and 
amiable a sou." 

A few years later he wrote from Combe Florey : — 

" We expect Saba and Dr. Holland the end of this month. 
I am in great hopes we shall have some ' cases ' : I am keep- 
ing three or four simmering for him. It is enough to break 
one's heart to see him in the country." 

In November 1834, the King dismissed the Whig 
Government, and sent for Sir Eobert Peel. A General 
Election took place at Christmas. In the spring of 
1835 PeePs Government was displaced by a vote of 
the House of Commons, and a W^hig Government 
was formed again under Lord Melbourne. Henry 
Labouchere,^ M.P. for Taunton, accepted office, and 
thereby vacated his seat. On seeking re-election, he 
was opposed, unsuccessfully, by Benjamin Disraeli. 

1 (1798-1869), created Lord Tauuton in 1859. 



162 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. 

"The Jew spoke for an hour. The boys called out 
^ Old Clothes ' as he came into the town, and offered 
to sell him sealing-wax and slippers." ^ 

As soon as the Election was over, the country relapsed 
into its normal calm. On the 3rd of June Sydney 
wrote : — 

"We are going through our usual course of jokes and 
dinners. One advantage of the country is that a joke once 
established is good for ever ; it is like the stuff which is 
denominated everlasting, and used as pantaloons by careful 
parents for their children." 

In the following autumn the Smiths paid a flying 
visit to France. The crossing from Dover was terrific ; 
but Sydney comforted himself with the reflexion that, 
"as I had so little life to lose, it was of little conse- 
quence whether I was drowned, or died, like a resident 
clergyman, from indigestion." 

France gave him the same pleasure as it had always 
given him. — 

" Paris is very full. I look at it with some attention, as 
I am not sure I may not end my days in it. I suspect the 
fifth act of life should be in great cities : it is there, in the 
long death of old age, that a man most forgets himself and 
his infirmities." 

" I care very little about dinners, but I shall not easily 
forget a matelote at the Rochers de Cancale, an almond tart 
at Montreuil, or Sipoulet a la Tartare at Grignon's. These are 
impressions which no changes in future life can obliterate." 

Before the year ended, he was established in Lon- 
don. The remaining ten years of his life saw him, 
in spite of some bodily infirmities, at the summit of 

1 This is interesting as being, so far as I know, Sydney Smith's 
only reference to Lord Beaconsfield. 



VI.] ARCHDEACON SINGLETON 163 

his social fame. An immense proportion of the anec- 
dotes relating to his conversation belong to this 
period. " It was," wrote Mr. Gladstone in 1879, " in 
the year 1835 that I met Mr. Sydney Smith for the 
first time at the table of Mr. Hallam. After dinner 
Mr. Smith was good enough to converse with me, and 
he spoke, not of any general changes in the prevailing 
tone of doctrine, but of the improvement which had 
then begun to be remarkable in the conduct and 
character of the clergy. He went back upon what 
they had been, and said, in his vivid and pointed 
way of illustration, 'Whenever you meet a clergy- 
man of my age, you may be quite sure he is a bad 
clergyman.' " ^ 

In 1836 the Ecclesiastical Commission was established 
by Act of Parliament as a permanent institution for 
the management of business relating to the Church. 
Its constitution and recommendations were very dis- 
tasteful to Sydney Smith; and, as time wxnt on, he 
found it impossible to restrain himself from public 
criticism. At the beginning of the Session of 1837, he 
published his " First Letter to Archdeacon Singleton." ^ 
The Letter begins with an attack on the constitution of 
the Commission. It was stuffed with Bishops. Deans 
and Canons and Kectors and Vicars and Curates had 
no place upon it. The result was that all interests, 
not episcopal, had been completely overlooked, and 
that the reforms, though perhaps theoretically sound, 
were practically unworkable. Further, the reforms 
had been far too extensive. The plan of making a 

1 Gladstone's Gleanings, vol. vii. p. 220. 

2 Thomas Singleton (1783-1842), Canon of Worcester and 
Archdeacon of Northumberland. 



164 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. 

Central Fund from the proceeds of confiscated Pre- 
bends/ and enriching the smaller livings with it, was 
chimerical. The whole income of the Church, equally 
divided among all its clergy, would only give each 
man the v/ages of a nobleman's butler. The true 
method in all professions was the method of Blanks 
and Prizes. But for the chance of those Prizes, men 
of good birth and education would not " go into the 
Church"; and an uneducated clergy would inevitably 
become fanatical. — 

" You will have a set of ranting, raving Pastors, who will 
wage war against all the innocent pleasures of life ; vie with 
each other in extravagance of zeal ; and plague your heart 
out with their nonsense and absurdity. Cribbage must be 
played in caverns, and sixpenny whist take refuge in the 
howling wilderness. In this way low men, doomed to hope- 
less poverty and galled by contempt, will endeavour to force 
themselves into station and significance." 

Then again there was the difficulty of oaths. The 
property of Cathedrals could only be confiscated at the 
expense of violated vows. — 

"The Archbishop of Canterbury, at his enthronement, 
takes a solemn oath that he will maintain the rights and liber- 
ties of the Church of Canterbury; as Chairman, however, of 
the New Commission, he seizes the patronage of that Church, 
takes two thirds of its Revenues, and abolishes two thirds of 
its Members. That there is an answer to this I am very 
willing to believe, but I cannot at present find out what it is; 
and this attack upon the Revenues and Members of Canter- 
bury is not obedience to an Act of Parliament, but the very 
Act of Parliament, which takes away, is recommended, drawn 
up, and signed by the person who has sworn he will never 

1 It is sometimes forgotten that a Prebend is a thing ; a Pre- 
bendary a person. 



VI.] ARCHDEACON SINGLETON 165 

take away; and this little apparent inconsistency is not con- 
fined to the Archbishop of Canterbury, but is shared equally 
by all the BishoxD-Commissioners, who have all (unless I am 
grievously mistaken) taken similar oaths for the preservation 
of their respective Chapters. It would be more easy to see 
our way out of this little embarrassment, if some of the em- 
barrassed had not unfortunately, in the parliamentary debates 
on the Catholic Question, laid the greatest stress upon the 
King's oath, applauded the sanctity of the monarch to the 
skies, rejected all comments, called for the oath in its plain 
naeaning, and attributed the safety of the English Church 
to the solemn vow made by the King at the altar to the 
Archbishops of Canterbury and York. 

" Nothing can be more ill-natured among politicians, than 
to look back into Hansard's Debates, to see what has been 
said by particular men upon particular occasions, and to con- 
trast such speeches with present opinions — and therefore I 
forbear to introduce some inviting passages upon taking oaths 
in their plain and obvious sense, both in debates on the Catho- 
lic Question and upon that fatal and Mezentian oath which 
binds the Irish to the English church." 

The gist of all these reforms, actual and projected, 
was that the Bishops were enormously increasing 
their own power and patronage at the expense of the 
Deans and Chapters. Sydney Smith, as a member of 
a Chapter, protested, and then the friends of the 
Bishops cried out that all such protests were indecent, 
and even perilous. — 

" We are told that if we agitate these questions among our- 
selves, we shall have the democratic Philistines come down 
upon us, and sweep us all away together. Be it so : I am 
quite ready to be swept away when the time comes. Every- 
body has his favourite death : some delight in apoplexy, and 
others prefer marasmus. ... I would infinitely rather be 
crushed by democrats than, under the plea of the public 
good, be mildly and blandly absorbed by Bishops." 



166 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. 

With Bishops as a body, and allowing for some 
notable exceptions, Sydney Smith seems to have had 
only an imperfect sympathy. He held that they 
could not be trusted to deal fairly and reasonably 
with men, subject to their jurisdiction, who dared to 
maintain independence in thought and action. — 

" A good and honest Bishop (I thank God there are many 
who deserve that character !) ought to suspect himself, and 
carefully to watch his own heart. lie is all of a sudden 
elevated from being a tutor, dining at an early hour with his 
pupil (and occasionally, it is believed, on cold meat), to be a 
spiritual Lord ; he is dressed in a magnificent dress, decorated 
with a title, flattered by Chaplains, and surrounded by little 
people looking up for the things which he has to give avpay; 
and this often happens to a man who has had no opportuni- 
ties of seeing the world, whose parents were in very humble life, 
and who has given up all his thoughts to the Frogs of Aris- 
tophanes and the Targum of Onkelos. How is it possible that 
such a man should not lose his head? that he should not swell? 
that he should not be guilty of a thousand follies, and worry 
and tease to death (before he recovers his common sense) a 
hundred men as good, and as wise, and as able as himself ? " 

On all accounts, therefore, both public and private, 
it was very good for Bishops to hear the voice of 
candid criticism, and their opportunities of enjoying 
that advantage were all too rare. — 

" Bishops live in high places with high people, or with little 
people who depend upon them. They walk delicately, like 
Agag. They hear only one sort of conversation, and avoid 
bold reckless men, as a lady veils herself from rough breezes." 

And for the Whig Government, which was con- 
senting to all these attacks on the Church and the 
Chapters, Sydney had his parting word of reminiscent 
rebuke. — 



VI.] ARCHDEACON SINGLETON 167 

" I neither wish to offeud them nor any body else. I consider 
myself to be as good a AVhig as any amongst them. I was a 
Whig before many of them were born — and while some of 
them were Tories and Waverers.i I have always turned out to 
fight their battles, and when I saw no other Clergyman turn 
out but myself — and this in times before liberality was well 
recompensed, and therefore in fashion, and when the smallest 
appearance of it seemed to condemn a Churchman to the 
grossest obloquy, and the most hopeless poverty. It may 
suit the purpose of the Ministers to flatter the Bench ; it does 
not suit mine. I do not choose in my old age to be tossed as 
a prey to the Bishops ; I have not deserved this of my Whig 
friends." 

It is perhaps not surprising that the Whig Ministers 
should have remained impervious to arguments thus 
enforced. On the 10th of February, Sydney Smith 
wrote to Lord John Kussell (whom he addressed as 
" My dear John " ) : — 

" You say you are not convinced by my pamphlet. I am 
afraid that I am a very arrogant person ; but I do assure you 
that, in the fondest moments of self-conceit, the idea of con- 
vincing a Russell that he was wrong never came across my 
mind. Euclid would have had a bad chance with you if you 
had happened to have formed an opinion that the interior 
angles of a triangle were not equal to two right angles. The 
more poor Euclid demonstrated, the more you would not have 
been convinced." 

In 1838 Sydney Smith published a second Letter to 
the same Archdeacon : — 

" It is a long time since you heard from me, and in the 
mean time the poor Church of England has been trembling, 

1 Compare his letter to Lady Holland, May 14, 1835 : — " Liberals 
of the eleventh hour abound! and there are some of the first 
hour, of whose work in the toil and heat of the day I have no 
recollection! " 



168 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. 

from the Bishop who sitteth upon the throne, to the Curate 
who rideth upon the hackney horse. I began writing on the 
subject in order to avoid bursting from indignation ; and, as it 
is not my habit to recede, I will go on till the Church of Eng- 
land is either up or down — semianimous on its back or 
vigorous on its legs. ... If what I write is liked, so much 
the better ; but, liked or not liked, sold or not sold, Wilson 
Crokered or not Wilson Crokered, I will write." ^ 

He now returns to the " Prebends " which the 
Commissioners propose to confiscate. Some of these, 
he says, are properties of great value. He instances 
one which will soon be worth between £40,000 and 
£60,000 a year. Some of them are held by non- 
residentiary Prebendaries, who never come near the 
Cathedral, and who have no duty except to enjoy their 
incomes. Those prebends Sydney Smith, as a real 
though temperate reformer, would now surrender, and 
make from them a fund to enrich poor livings. But 
for the prebends of the Residentiaries, who perform the 
daily duties of the Cathedral, he will fight to the death. 
With splendid courage he asserts that these great 
estates, held for life by ecclesiastical officers, are as 
well managed, and as profitably employed, with a view 
to the general interests of the community, as the lands 
of any peer or squire. — 

" Take, for instance, the Cathedral of Bristol, the whole es- 
tates of which are about equal to keeping a pack of fox-hounds. 
If this had been in the hands of a country gentleman ; instead 
of Pregentor, Succentor, Dean, and Canons, and Sexton, 
you would have had huntsman, whippers-in, dog-feeders, and 
stoppers of earths ; the old squire, full of foolish opinions and 
fermented liquids, and a young gentleman of gloves, waist- 

1 John Wilson Croker (1780-1857), M.P. and Tory pamphleteer. 



VI.] ARCHDEACON SINGLETON 169 

coats, and pantaloons : and how many generations might it 
be before the fortuitous concourse of noodles would pro- 
duce such a man as Professor Lee.i one of the Prebendaries 
of Bristol, and by far the most eminent Oriental scholar in 
Europe." 

Then he reverts to his familiar argument that the 
abolition of these ecclesiastical prizes would lower the 
social character of the clergy as a body. — 

" To get a stall, and to be preceded by men with silver 
rods, is the bait which the ambitious squire is perpetually 
holding out to his second son. ... If such sort of prefer- 
ments are extinguished, a very serious evil (as I have often 
said before) is done to the Church — the service becomes 
unpopular, further spoliation is dreaded, the whole system is 
considered to be altered and degraded, capital is withdrawn 
from the Church, and no one enters into the profession but 
the sons of farmers and little tradesmen, who would be foot- 
men if they were not vicars — or figure on the coach-box if 
they were not lecturing from the pulpit. 

" K you were to gather a Parliament of Curates on the 
hottest Sunday in the year, after all the services, sermons, 
burials, and baptisms of the day, were over, and to offer them 
such increase of salary as would be produced by the confis- 
cation of the Cathedral property, I am convinced they would 
reject the measure, and prefer splendid hope, and the expecta- 
tion of good fortune in advanced life, to the trifling improve- 
ment of poverty which such a fund could afford. Charles 
James, of London, was a Curate ; the Bishop of Winchester 2 
was a Curate ; almost every rose-and-shovel man has been a 
Curate in his time. All Curates hope to draw great prizes. 

" One of the most foolish circumstances attending this 

1 Samuel Lee (1783-1852). 

2 Charles Richard Sumner (1790-1874). 



170 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. 

destruction of Cathedral property is tlie great sacrifice of the 
patronage of tlie Crown : the Crown gives up eight Prebends 
of Westminster, two at Worcester, £1500 per annum at St. 
Paul's, two Prebends at Bristol, and a great deal of other 
preferment all over the kingdom : and this at a moment when 
such extraordinary power has been suddenly conferred upon 
the people, and when every atom of power and patronage 
ought to be husbanded for the Crown. A Prebend of 
Westminster for my second son would soften the Catos of 
Cornhill, and lull the Gracchi of the Metropolitan Boroughs, 
Lives there a man so absurd, as to suppose that Government 
can be carried on without those gentle allurements? You 
may as well attempt to poultice off the humps of a camel's 
back as to cure mankind of these little corruptions. 

" I am terribly alarmed by a committee of Cathedrals now 
sitting in London, and planning a petition to the Legislature 
to be heard by counsel. They will take such high ground, 
and talk a language so utterly at variance with the feelings 
of the age about Church Property, that I am much afraid 
they will do more harm than good. In the time of Lord 
George Gordon's riots, the Guards said they did not care for 
the mob, if the Gentlemen Volunteers behind would be so 
good as not to hold their muskets in such a dangerous man- 
ner. I don't care for popular clamour, and think it might 
now be defied ; but I confess the Gentlemen Volunteers 
alarm me. They have unfortunately, too, collected their 
addresses, and published them in a single volume 1 ! ! " ^ 

And now he returns to one of the prominent topics 
of his first Letter, and reminds the Archbishop of 
Canterbury that he has sworn to protect the rights 
and possessions of the Metropolitical Church of 
Canterbury. — 

1 On the 13th of January 1838, he wrote to the Bishop of London 
— " I think the best reason for destroying the Cathedrals is the 
abominable trash and nonsense they have all published since the 
beginning of this dispute." 



VI.] ARCHDEACON SINGLETON 171 

" A friend of mine has suggested to me that his Grace has 
perhaps forgotten the oath ; but this cannot be, for the first 
Protestant in Europe of course makes a memorandum in his 
pocket-book of all the oaths he takes to do, or to abstain. 
The oath, however, may be less present to the Archbishop's 
memory, from the fact of his not having taken the oath in 
person, but by the medium of a gentleman sent down by the 
coach to take it for him — a practice which, though I believe it 
to have been long established in the Church, surprised me, I 
confess, not a little. A proxy to vote, if you ]3 lease — a prox}^ 
to consent to arrangements of estates if wanted ; but a proxy 
sent down in the Canterbury Fly, to take the Creator to 
witness that the Archbishop, detained in town by business 
or pleasure, will never violate that foundation of piety over 
which he presides — all this seems to me an act of the most? 
extraordinary indolence ever recorded in history. If an 
Ecclesiastic, not a Bishop, may express any opinion on the 
reforms of the Church, I recommend that Archbishops and 
Bishops should take no more oaths by proxy ; but, as they do 
not wait upon the Sovereign or the Prime Minister, or even 
any of the Cabinet, by proxy, that they should also perform 
all religious acts in their own person. ... I have been 
informed, though I will not answer for the accuracy of the 
information, that this vicarious oath is likely to ]3roduce a 
scene which would have puzzled the Ductor Duhitantium. 
The attorney who took the oath for the Archbishop is, 
they say, seized with religious horrors at the approaching con- 
fiscation of Canterbury property, and has in vain tendered 
back his 6s. 8d. for taking the oath. The Archbishop refuses 
to accept it ; and feeling himself light and disencumbered, 
wisely keeps the saddle upon the back of the writhing and 
agonized scrivener. I have talked it over with several 
Clergymen, and the general opinion is, that the scrivener 
will suffer." 

And next he turns his attention to a foolish Bishop 
who has argued in a pamphlet that, if a fund for the 
improvement of poor benefices was to be created, it 



172 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. 

must be drawn from the property of tlie Cathedrals, 
because the Bishops' incomes had already been pruned. 

" This is very good Episcopal reasoning ; but is it true? 
The Bishops and Commissioners wanted a fund to endow 
small Livings ; they did not touch a farthing of their own 
incomes, only distributed them a little more equally; and 
proceeded lustily at once to confiscate Cathedral Property. 
But w^hy was it necessary, if the fund for small Livings was 
such a paramount consideration, that the future Archbishops 
of Canterbury should be left with two palaces, and £15,000 
per annum ? Why is every future Bishop of London to have 
a palace in Fulham, ahouse in St. James's Square, and £10,000 
a year ? Could not all the Episco23al functions be carried on 
well and effectually with the half of these incomes ? Is it 
necessary that the Archbishop of Canterbury should give 
feasts to Aristocratic London ; and that the domestics of the 
Prelacy should stand with swords and bag-wigs round pig, 
and turkey, and venison, to defend, as it were, the Orthodox 
gastronome from the fierce Unitarian, the fell Baptist, and all 
the famished children of Dissent? I don't object to all this ; 
because I am sure that the method of prizes and blanks is the 
best method of supporting a Church which must be considered 
as very slenderly endowed, if the whole were equally divided 
among the parishes ; but if my ojDinion were different — if I 
thought the important improvement was to equalize prefer- 
ment in the English Church — that such a measure was not 
the one thing foolish, but the one thing needful — I should take 
care, as a mitred Commissioner, to reduce my own species 
of preferment to the narrowest limits, before I proceeded to 
confiscate the property of any other grade of the Church. . . . 
Frequently did Lord John meet the destroying Bishops ; much 
did he commend their daily heap of ruins; sweetly did they 
smile on each other, and much charming talk was there of 
meteorology and catarrh, and the particular Cathedral they 
were pulling down at each period ; till one fine day the Home 
Secretary,^ with a voice more bland, and a look more ardently 
affectionate, than that which the masculine mouse bestows 

1 Lord John Russell. 



VI.] ARCHDEACON SINGLETON 173 

on his nibbling female, informed them that the Government 
meant to take all the Church property into their own hands, 
to pay the rates out of it and deliver the residue to the right- 
ful possessors. Such an effect, they say, was never before 
produced by a coup de theatre. The Commission was sepa- 
rated in an instant. London clenched his fist. Canterbury 
was harried out by his chaplains, and put into a warm bed. 
A solemn vacancy spread itself over the face of Gloucester. 
Lincoln was taken out in strong hysterics. What a noble 
scene Serjeant Talfourd ^ would have made of all this ? AVhy 
are such talents wasted on Ion and The Athenian Captivel" 

And then Sydney Smith went on to a stricture on 
his friend Lord John Russell, which has been quoted 
in a thousand forms from that day to this. It is only 
fair both to the critic and to the criticized that this 
stricture should be read in connexion with its history. 

When, in November 1834, Lord Althorp's removal 
to the House of Lords vacated the Leadership of the 
House of Commons, Lord Melbourne and the rest of 
the Cabinet decided that Lord John must take it. He 
doubted his fitness for the post, but said that even if 
he were called to take command of the Channel Fleet, 
he supposed he must obey the call and do his best. 
Sydney Smith heard of this modest and patriotic say- 
ing, and wove it into his most celebrated passage. — 

" There is not a better man in England than Lord John 
Russell ; but his worst failure is that he is utterly ignorant 
of all moral fear ; there is nothing he would not undertake. 
I believe he would perform the operation for the stone — build 
St. Peter's — or assume (with or without ten minutes' notice) 
the command of the Channel Fleet; and no one would dis- 
cover by his manner that the patient had died — the Church 
tumbled down — and the Channel Fleet been knocked to 
atoms. I believe his motives are always pure, and his meas- 

1 Thomas Noon Talfourd (1795-1854), Judge and Dramatist. 



174 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. 

ures often able ; but they are endless, and never done with 
that pedetentous pace and pedetentous mind in which it 
behoves the wise and virtuous improver to walk. Pie alarms 
the wise Liberals ; and it is impossible to sleep soundly while 
he has the command of the watch." 

Once again, in 1839, Sydney Smith, returned to the 
same subject through the same medium. He rejoiced 
in great improvements which had been introduced into 
the measures of the Commissioners, claimed some 
credit for these improvements, and pointed out that 
they materially affected the well-being of the parochial 
clergy. But, as regards the dealings of the Commis- 
sion with Chapters and Cathedrals, he remains con- 
vinced that they were rash, foolish, and dangerous to 
the Church. ^' Milton asked where the nymphs were 
when Lycidas perished? I ask where the Bishops are 
when the remorseless deep is closing over the head of 
their beloved Establishment." 

One of the Bishops had emerged from silence and 
security to rebuke the correspondent of Archdeacon 
Singleton, and now he had his reward. — 

" You must have read an attack upon me by the Bishop of 
Gloucester,! in the course of which he says that I have not 
been appointed to my situation as Canon of St. Paul's for my 
piety and learning, but because I am a scoffer and a jester. 
Is not this rather strong for a Bishop, and does it not appear 
to you, Mr. Archdeacon, as rather too close an imitation of 
that language which is used in the apostolic occupation of 
trafficking in fish ? Whether I have been appointed for my 
piety or not, must depend upon what this poor man means 
by piety. He means by that word, of course, a defence of all 
the tyrannical and oppressive abuses of the Church which 
have been swept away within the last fifteen or twenty years 

1 James Henry Monk (1784-185G). 



VI.] AECHDEACON SINGLETON 175 

of my life ; the Corporation and Test Acts ; the Penal Laws 
against the Catholics ; the Compulsory Marriages of Dissent- 
ers, and all those disabling and disqualifying laws which were 
the disgrace of our Church, and which he has always looked up 
to as the consummation of human wisdom. If piety consisted 
in the defence of these — if it was impious to struggle for their 
abrogation, I have indeed led an ungodly life. ... To read, 
however, his Lordshij) a lesson of good manners, I had pre- 
pared for him a chastisement which would have been echoed 
from the Segrave who banqueteth in the castle,^ to the idiot 
who spitteth over the bridge at Gloucester." 

But the Bishop had made a rather misplaced appeal 
for compassion, on account of his failing eyesight; 
and Sydney, flinging him contemptuously on one side, 
passed on to the more formidable Bishop of London. — 

" I was much amused with what old Hermann says of the 
Bishop of London's jEschijlus. ' We find,' he says, ' a great 
arbitrariness of 'proceeding^ and much boldness of innovation,- 
guided by no sure priiiciple ' ; here it is : qualis ab incepto. 
He begins with ^Eschylus, and ends with the Church of 
England ; begins with profane, and ends with holy innova- 
tions — scratching out old readings which every commentator 
had sanctioned; abolishing ecclesiastical dignities which 
every reformer had spared; thrusting an anapaest into a 
verse, which will not bear it ; and intruding a Canon into a 
Cathedral, which does not want it ; and this is the Prelate by 
whom the proposed reform of the Church has been principally 
planned, and to whose practical wisdom the Legislature is 
called upon to defer. The Bishop of London is a man of very 
great ability, humane, placable, generous, munificent ; very 
agreeable, but not to be trusted with great interests where 
calmness and judgment are required : unfortunately, my old 
and amiable school-fellow, the Archbishop of Canterbury, has 

1 William FitzHardinge Berkeley (1786-1857) was created Lord 
Segrave of Berkeley Castle in 1831, and Earl FitzHardinge in 
1841. 



176 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. 

melted away before him, and sacrificed that wisdom on which 
we all founded our security. . . . Whatever happens, I am 
not to blame. I have fought my fight. Farewell." 

A little later he wrote to an old friend : — 

" I don't like writing to the Bishop of London : it is mak- 
ing a fuss, and looks as if I regretted the part I had taken on 
Church Reform, which I certainly do not — but I should be 
much annoyed if the Bishop were to consider me as a per- 
petual grumbler against him and his measures — I really am 
not : I like the Bishop and like his conversation — the battle 
is ended, and I have no other quarrel with him and the Arch- 
bishop but that they neither of them ever ask me to dinner. 
You see a good deal of the Bishop, and as you have always 
exhorted me to be a good boy, take an opportunity to set him 
right as to my real dispositions towards him, and exhort him, 
as he has gained the victory, to forgive a few hard knocks." 

In the summer of 1839 Courtenay Smitb died sud- 
denly, and left no will.^ He had accumulated wealth 
in India, and a third part of it now passed to his 
brother Sydney. Referring to these circumstances 
four years later, Sydney wrote : — 

" This put me at my ease for my few remaining years. 
After buying into the Consols and the Reduced, I read Seneca 
On the Contempt of Wealth. What intolerable nonsense ! 

" I have been very poor the greatest part of my life, and 
have borne it as well, I believe, as most people, but I can safely 
say that I have been happier every guinea I have gained." 

His novel opulence did not paralyze his pen. In 

i"You see my younger brother, Courtenay, is turned out of 
office in India, for refusing the surety of the East India 
Company! Truly the Smiths are a stiff-necked generation, 
and yet they have all got rich hut I. Courtenay, they say, 
has £150,000, and he keeps only a cat! In the last letter I had 
from him, which was in 1802, he confessed that his money was 
gathering very fast." (S. S. 1827). 



VI.] COLLECTED WORKS 177 

1839 lie published a vehement attack upon the 
Ballot, from which he foresaw no better results 
than the enfranchisement of every one, including 
women, universal corruption, systematic lying, and a 
victory for the " lower order of voters " over their 
"betters." Of the great advocate of the Ballot, 
George Grote,^ he says — " Mr. Grote knows the rela- 
tive values of gold and silver ; but by what moral rate 
of exchange is he able to tell us the relative values 
of Liberty and Truth ? " 

The paper on the Ballot was included in a collection 
of reprints, mainly from the Edinburgh Review, which 
he published in 1839. The book sold so well that 
in 1840 he published an enlarged edition. The articles 
reprinted from the Edinburgh amounted to sixty-five, 
and a memorandum by his daughter shows that twelve 
more were omitted from the reproduction, " probably 
because their subjects are already treated of in the 
extracted articles, or because they applied only to the 
period in which they were written." The complete 
list will be found in Appendix A. 

In the preface to these collected pieces, which are 
styled The Works of the Rev. Sydney Smith, the author 
said, after recounting the circumstances under which 
the Edinburgh Review was founded : — 

" To set on foot such a Journal in such times, to contribute 
towards it for many years, to bear patiently the reproach and 
poverfrs^ which it caused, and to look back and see that I have 
nothing to retract, and no intemperance and violence to 
reproach myself with, is a career of life which I must think 
to be extremely fortunate. Strange and ludicrous are the 

1 (1794-1871), Banker, historian, and politician. 

N 



178 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. 

changes in human affairs. The Tories are now on the tread- 
mill, and the well-paid Whigs are riding in chariots : with 
many faces, however, looking out of the windows (including 
that of our Prime Minister ^), which I never remember to 
have seen in the days of the poverty and depression of 
Whiggism. Liberality is now a lucrative business. Who- 
ever has any institution to destroy, may consider himself as 
a Commissioner, and his fortune as made ; and, to my utter 
and never-ending astonishment, I, an old Edinburgh Reviewer, 
find myself fighting, in the year 1839, against the Archbisho]) 
of Canterbury and the Bishop of London, for the existence 
of the National Church." 

Some of the reprinted articles would be fairly- 
ranked in the present day under the derogatory title 
of " Pot-boilers " ; but others are among the most 
effective and entertaining pieces which the author 
ever penned. Some of these must be specified. There 
is the extraordinarily amusing, but quite unjust, attack 
on Methodism, under which convenient heading are 
grouped " the sentiments of Arminian and Calvinistic 
Methodists, and of the Evangelical clergymen of the 
Church of England." The fun in this article is chiefly 
gleaned from the pages of the Evangelical Magazine 
and the Methodist Magazine. Here we have the 
affecting story of the young man who swore, and 
was stung by a bee "on the tip of the unruly 
member," " one of the meanest of creatures " being 
thus employed " to reprove the bold transgressor." 
Not less moving are the reflexions of the religious 
observer who saw a man driving clumsily in a gig. — 
" ' What (I said to myself) if a single untoward cir- 
cumstance should happen! Should the horse take 
fright, or the wheel on either side get entangled, or 

1 William, Viscount Melbourne (1779-1848). 



VI.] COLLECTED WORKS 179 

the gig upset, — in either case what can preserve them ? 
And should a morning so fair and promising bring 
on evil before night, — should death on his pale horse 
appear, — v^hat follows ? ' My mind shuddered at 
the images I had raised." 

Very curious too is the case of the people who, 
desiring to go by sea to Margate, found the cabin 
occupied by a " mixed multitude who spoke almost 
all languages but that of Canaan " ; and started a 
weekly hoy on which "no profane conversation was 
allowed." The advertisements are as quaint as the 
correspondence. — 

"'Wanted, a man of serious character, who can shave.' 
< Wanted, a serious young woman, as servant of all work.' 
^ Wants a place, a young man who has brewed in a serious 
family.' " 

On these eccentricities of mistaken devotion, Sydney 
pounces with delighted malice ; and his jokes, acrid 
as they are, seem to be the vehicles of a real convic- 
tion. He honestly believed that " enthusiasm " in 
religion tended to hysteria and insanity ; that it sapped 
plain morality ; and turned the simple poor into "active 
and mysterious fools." Something, he thought, "in 
the way of ridicule," might be done towards checking 
Methodism, and to that task he addressed himself 
with hearty goodwill. 

Equally unfair, and equally insensible to all the 
appeals of religious feTvour, is the article on Indian 
Missions, for which, fifty years after. Archbishop 
Tait found it hard to forgive him.^ Here again the 

i"Have you read Sydney Smith's Life? There is a strange 
mixture in his character of earnest common-seuse and fun. On 



180 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. 

artificial qiiaintness of religious phrase and thought 
gave him the necessary material for his fun. As he 
had found delight in the proper names of Methodist 
ministers — Shufflebottom and Ringletub ^ — so he de- 
lighted in lampooning " Ram Boshoo," and " Buxoo a 
brother," and " the Catechist of Collesigrapatuam." 

The saintly and scholarly Carey ^ ought to have been 
safe from his attacks, but the Baptist Missionary 
Society rather invited ridicule. — 

" Brother Carey, while very sea-sick, and leaning over the 
ship to relieve his stomach from that very oppressive com- 
plaint, said his mind was even then filled with consolation 
in contemplating the wonderful goodness of God." 

And Brother Carey's own journal was calculated to 
raise a smile. — 



the whole, I think he will be thought more highly of in conse- 
quence of the publication of the Life, though it may be doubted 
whether his rehgion was not injured by his strong sense of 
the ludicrous. I cannot forgive him for his anti-missionary arti- 
cles in the Edinburgh Review." — Life of Archbishop Talt, vol. i. 
chapter xiii. 

What seems to be his later and juster judgment on missionary 
work is given, without date, by Lady Holland. " Some one, 
speaking of Missions, ridiculed them as inefficient. He dis- 
sented, saying, that though all was not done that was projected, 
or even boasted of, yet that much good resulted ; and that wherever 
Christianity was taught, it brought with it the additional good of 
civilization in its train, and men became better carpenters, better 
cultivators, better everything." 

1 " It is immaterial whether Mr. Shufflebottom preaches at 
Bungay, and Mr. Ringletub at Ipswich ; or whether an artful 
vicissitude is adopted, and the order of insane predication 
reversed." 

2 William Carey (1761-1834), shoemaker, Orientalist, and 
missionary. 



VI.] COLLECTED WORKS 181 

"1793. June 30. Lord's-day. A pleasant and profitable 
day: our congregation composed of ten persons." 

" July 7. Another pleasant and profitable Lord's-day : our 
congregation increased with one. Had much sweet enjoy- 
ment with God." 

" 1794. Jan. 26. Lord's-day. Found much pleasure in 
reading Edwards's Sermon on the Justice of God in tie 
Damnation of Sinners." 

" April 6. Had some sweetness to-day, especially in read- 
ing Edwards's Sermon." 

" 1796. Feb. 6. I am now in my study ; and oh, it is a 
sweet place, because of the presence of God with the vilest 
of men. It is at the top of the house; I have but one 
window in it." 

In reply to Jeffrey, who as Editor of the Edin- 
burgh Review rebuked his contributor for ^' levity of 
quotations/' Sydney Smith, wrote in 1808 : — 

" I do not understand what you mean. I attack these men 
because they have foolish notions of religion. The more 
absurd the passage, the more necessary it should be dis- 
played — the more urgent the reason for making the attack 
at all." 

This is at any rate an explanation, even if it does 
not amount to a justification; but what is lamentable 
is that, as in the case of the Methodists at home, he 
seems frankly unable to conceive of the passion for 
spreading the Gospel which drove men from all that 
is enjoyable in life to slave and die under Indian suns. 
He seems genuinely to believe that the spread of the 
Christian religion in India will produce a revolution, 
and he turns the ludicrous blunders of religious men 
into arguments for slothfulness in evangelization. — 

"If there were a fair prospect of carrying the Gospel into 
regions where it was before unknown, — if such a project did 
not expose the best possessions of the country to extreme 



182 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. 

danger, and if it was in the hands of men who were discreet 
as well as devout, we should consider it to be a scheme of 
true piety, benevolence, and wisdom : but the baseness and 
malignity of fanaticism shall never prevent us from attacking 
its arrogance, its ignorance, and its activity. For what vice 
can be more tremendous than that which, while it wears the 
outward appearance of religion, destroys the happiness of 
man, and dishonours the name of God?" 

In the second article on Methodism, he returns, as 
his manner was, to the ground formerly traversed, and 
claims the praise of all reasonable men for his previous 
strictures. — 

" In routing out a nest of consecrated cobblers, and in 
bringing to light such a perilous heap of trash as we were 
obliged to work through, in our articles upon the Methodists 
and Missionaries, we are generally conceived to have rendered 
an useful service to the cause of rational religion." 

But he had been rebuked by the admirers of the 
Cobblers, and now he turns upon his rebukers with 
characteristic vigour. Prominent among these was 
the Eev. John Styles, and Mr. Styles, unhappily 
for his cause and happily for his opponent, made a 
grotesque slip which Sydney turned to the best 
advantage. — 

" In speaking of the cruelties which their religion entails 
upon the Hindoos, Mr. Styles is peculiarly severe upon us 
for not being more shocked at their piercing their limbs with 
times. This is rather an unfair mode of alarming his readers 
with the idea of some unknown instrument. He represents 
himself as having paid considerable attention to the manners 
and customs of the Hindoos ; and, therefore, the peculiar 
stress he lays upon this instrument is naturally calculated to 
produce, in the minds of the humane, a great degree of 
mysterious terror. A drawing of the kune was imperiously 
called for; and the want of it is a subtle evasion, for which 



vi.] COLLECTED WORKS 183 

Mr. Styles is fairly accountable. As he has been silent on 
this subject, it is for us to explain the plan and nature of 
this terrible and unknown piece of mechanism. Kiines, then, 
are neither more nor less than a false print in the Edinburgh 
Review for knives ; and from this blunder of the printer has 
Mr. Styles manufactured this Dsedalean instrument of torture, 
called a kime I We were at first nearly persuaded by his 
argument against kimes; we grew frightened ; — we stated to 
ourselves the horror of not sending missionaries to a nation 
which used kimes ; — we were struck with the nice and ac- 
curate information of the Tabernacle upon this important 
subject: — but we looked in the errata, and found Mr. Styles 
to be always Mr. Styles — always cut off from every hope of 
mercy, and remaining for ever himself." 

At the end of the article, the writer glories in the 
fact that the Government of India is beginning to 
harry the missionaries. — 

" The Board of Control (all Atheists, and disciples of 
Yoltake, of course) are so entirely of our way of thinking, 
that the most peremptory orders have been issued to send all 
the missionaries home upon the slightest appearance of dis- 
turbance. Those who have sons and brothers in India may 
now sleep in peace. Upon the transmission of this order, 
Mr. Styles is said to have destroyed himself with a kime." 

The same vigorous dislike to the Evangelical way 
of religion animates the article on Hannah More ; 
and here again the criticized writer gave the critic 
just the handle which he required. 

" We observe that Mrs. More, in one part of her work, falls 
into the common error about dress. She first blames ladies 
for exposing their persons in the present style of dress, and 
then says, if they knew their own interest — if they were 
aware how much more alluring they were to men when their 
charms are less displayed, they would make the desired 
alteration from motives merely selfish. 

" ' Oh ! if women in general knew what was their real 



184 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. 

interest, if they could guess with what a charm even the 
appearance of modesty invests its possessor, they would dress 
decorously from mere self-love, if not from principle. The 
designing would assume modesty as an artifice ; the coquette 
would adopt it as an allurement; the pure as her appropriate 
attraction ; and the voluptuous as the most infallible art of 
seduction.' 

" If there is any truth in this passage, nudity becomes a 
virtue ; and no decent woman, for the future, can be seen in 
garments." 

That is aptly said ; but it is a relief to turn from 
Sydney Smith the Philistine — the bigoted and rather 
brutal opponent of enthusiastic religion, to Sydney 
Smith the Philanthropist — the passionate advocate 
of humanitarian reform born at least fifty years before 
his time. Excellent illustrations of this aspect of his 
character are to be found in " Mad Quakers," with its 
study of the improved methods of treating lunacy ; 
" Chimney-Sweepers," " Game-Laws," " Spring-Guns," 
"Prisons," and "Counsel for Prisoners." Each of 
these essays shows a deliciously warm sympathy with 
the sufferings of the downtrodden and the friendless ; 
and a curiously intimate knowledge of matters which 
lie quite outside the scope of a clergyman's ordinary 
duties. As an appreciation of character, friendly but 
not servile, nothing can be better than his paper on Sir 
James Mackintosh,^ with the illustration from Curran, 
and the noble image (which the writer himself admired) 
of the man-of-war. Writing to Sir James's son, Sydney 
Smith says : — 

" Curran, the Master of the Rolls, said to Mr. Grattan, 
' You w^ould be the greatest man of your age, Grattan, if you 

1 (1765-1832), historian and philosopher. 



VI.] COLLECTED WORKS 185 

would buy a few yards of red tape, and tie up your bills and 
papers.' This was the fault or the misfortune of your excellent 
father ; he never knew the use of red tape, and was utterly 
unfit for the common business of life. That a guinea repre- 
sented a quantity of shillings, and that it would barter for 
a quantity of cloth, he was well aware ; but the accurate 
number of the baser coin, or the just measurement of the 
manufactured article, to which he was entitled for his gold, he 
could never learn, and it was impossible to teach him. Hence 
his life was often an example of the ancient and melancholy 
struggle of genius with the difficulties of existence. 

" A high merit in Sir James Mackintosh was his real and 
unaffected philanthropy. He did not make the improvement 
of the great mass of mankind an engine of popularity, and a 
stepping-stone to power, but he had a genuine love of human 
happiness. Whatever might assuage the angry passions, and 
arrange the conflicting interests of nations ; whatever could 
promote peace, increase knowledge, extend commerce, dimin- 
ish crime, and encourage industry ; whatever could exalt 
human character, and could enlarge human understanding, 
struck at once at the heart of your father, and roused all 
his faculties. I have seen him in a moment when this spirit 
came upon him — like a great ship of war — cut his cable, 
and spread his enormous canvas, and launch into a wide sea 
of reasoning eloquence." 

For pure fun, one could not quote a better sample 
than the review of Waterton's ^ Travels in South 
America. — 

" Snakes are certainly an annoyance ; but the snake, though 
high-spirited, is not quarrelsome ; he considers his fangs to be 
given for defence, and not for annoyance, and never inflicts a 
wound but to defend existence. If you tread upon him, he 
puts you to death for your clumsiness, merely because he does 
not understand what your clumsiness means ; and certainly a 

1 Charles Waterton (1782-18G5), naturalist. 



186 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. 

snake, who feels fourteen or fifteen stone stamping upon his 
tail, has little time for reflexion, and may be allowed to be 
poisonous and peevish. American tigers generally run away 
— from which several respectable gentlemen in Parliament 
inferred, in the American war, that American soldiers would 
run away also ! 

" The description of the birds is very animated and interest- 
ing ; but how far does the gentle reader imagine the Campanero 
may be heard, whose size is that of a jay ? Perhaps 300 
yards. Poor innocent, ignorant reader ! unconscious of w^hat 
Nature has done in the forests of Cayenne, and measuring the 
force of tropical intonation by the sounds of a Scotch duck ! 
The Campanero may be heard three miles ! — this single little 
bird being more powerful than the belfry of a cathedral, 
ringing for a new dean — just appointed on account of shabby 
politics, small understanding, and good family ! . . . It is 
impossible to contradict a gentleman who has been in the 
forests of Cayenne; but we are determined, as soon as a 
Campanero is brought to England, to make him toll in a 
public place, and have the distance measured. 

" The Toucan has an enormous bill, makes a noise like a 
puppy dog, and lays his eggs in hollow trees. How astonish- 
ing are the freaks and fancies of nature ! To what purpose, 
we say, is a bird placed in the woods of Cayenne with 
a bill a yard long, making a noise like a puppy dog, and 
laying eggs in hollow trees? The Toucans, to be sure, 
might retort, to what purpose were gentlemen in Bond 
Street created ? To what purpose were certain foolish 
prating Members of Parliament created? — pestering the 
House of Commons with their ignorance and folly, and 
impeding the business of the country? There is no end of 
such questions. So we will not enter into the metaphysics 
of the Toucan. 

" The Sloth, in its wild state, spends its life in trees, and 
never leaves them but from force or accident. The eagle to 
the sky, the mole to the ground, the sloth to the tree ; but 
what is most extraordinary, he lives not upon the branches, 
but under them. He moves suspended, rests suspended, sleeps 



VI.] COLLECTED WORKS 187 

suspended, and passes his life in suspense — like a young 
clergyman distantly related to a bishop. 

"Just before his third journey, Mr. Waterton takes leave of 
Sir Joseph Banks,i and speaks of him with affectionate regret. 
' I saw ' (says Mr. W.), ' with sorrow, that death was going to 
rob us of him. We talked of stuffing quadrupeds ; I agreed 
that the lips and nose ought to be cut off, and stuffed with 
wax.' This is the way great naturalists take an eternal 
farewell of each other ! 

" Lisects are the curse of tropical climates. The bete rouge 
lays the foundation of a tremendous ulcer. In a moment you 
are covered with ticks. Chigoes bury themselves in your 
flesh, and hatch a large colony of young chigoes in a few hours. 
They will not live together, but every chigoe sets up a separate 
ulcer, and has his own private portion of pus. Flies get 
entry into your mouth, into your eyes, into your nose ; you 
eat flies, drink flies, and breathe flies. Lizards, cockroaches, 
and snakes get into the bed ; ants eat up the books ; scorpions 
sting you on the foot. Every thing bites, stings, or bruises ; 
every second of your existence you are wounded by some 
piece of animal life that nobody has ever seen before, except 
Swammerdam and Meriam. An insect with eleven legs is 
swimming in your teacup, a nondescrif)t with- nine wings is 
struggling in the small beer, or a caterpillar with several 
dozen eyes in his belly is hastening over the bread and butter ! 
All nature is alive, and seems to be gathering all her entomo- 
logical hosts to eat you up, as you are standing, out of your 
coat, waistcoat, and breeches. Such are the tropics. All this 
reconciles us to our dews, fogs, vapours, and drizzle — to our 
apothecaries rushing about with gargles and tinctures — to 
our old, British, constitutional coughs, sore throats, and 
swelled faces." 

Space should be found, in even the shortest book on 
Sydney Smith, for two passages in which, perhaps 

1 (1743-1820). 



188 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. 

more effectively than anywhere else, he clinched an 
argument with a masterpiece of fun. The first is the 
warning to the United States against the love of 
military glory. The second is the wonderful concate- 
nation of fallacies in " Noodle's Oration." ^ Both these 
pieces will be found in Appendix B. 
In 1840 he wrote to a friend : — 

" I printed my reviews to show, if I could, that I had not 
passed my life merely in making jokes ; but that I had made 
use of what little powers of pleasantry I might be endowed 
with, to discountenance bad, and to encourage liberal and 
wise, principles." 

The natural and becoming indolence of age was now 
beginning to show itself in Sydney Smith. He had 
worked harder than most men in his day, and now he 
wisely cultivated ease. In his comfortable house in 
Green Street, he received his friends with what he 
himself so excellently called "that honest joy which 
warms more than dinner or wine " ; but he went less 
than of old into general society. Least of all was he 
inclined to that most melancholy of all exertions which 

1 It is possible that the argument about the Wisdom of our 
Ancestors in "Noodle's Oration" may have been suggested by 
the following extract from the Parliamentary Debates for May 
26, 1797. On Mr. Grey's Motion for a Reform of Parliament, 
Sir Gregory Page-Turner, M.P., spoke as follows:— "He craved 
the indulgence of the House for a few observations which he 
had to make. When he got up in the morning and when he 
lay down at night, he always felt for the Constitution. On 
this question he had never had but one opinion. When he 
came first into Parliament, he remembered that the Chancellor 
of the Exchequer proposed a Reform, but he saw it was wrong, 
and he opposed it. Would it not be madness to change what 
had been handed, sound and entire, down from the days of their 
fathers?" 



VI.] COLLECTED WORKS 189 

consists in rushing about to entertainments which do 
not amuse. In 1840 he wrote, in answering an invita- 
tion to the Opera : — 

" Thy servant is threescore-and-ten years old ; can he hear 
the sound of singing men and singing women ? A Canon 
at the Opera ! Where have you lived ? In what habitations 
of the heathen ? I thank you, shuddering." 

Although the Canon would not go to the Opera, his 
general faculty of enjoyment was unimpaired, and, as 
always, he loved a gibe at the clergy. On the 30th 
of November 1841, Samuel Wilberforce wrote to a 
friend about George Augustus Selwyn,^ Missionary 
Bishop of New Zealand : — 

" Selwyn is just setting out. Sydney Smith says it will 
make quite a revolution in the dinners of New Zealand. 
Tete d'Eveque will be the most recherche dish, and the ser- 
vant w ill add, ' And there is cold clergyman on the side- 
table.' " 

But this is Sydney's own version of the joke : — 

" The advice I sent to the Bishop of New Zealand, when he 
had to receive the cannibal chiefs there, was to say to them, 
' I deeply regret, su-s, to have nothing on my own table suited 
to your tastes, but you will find plenty of cold curate and 
roasted clergyman on the sideboard ' ; and if, in spite of this 
prudent provision, his visitors should end their repast by eat- 
ing him likewise, why I could only add, ' I sincerely hoped 
he would disagree with them.' " 

In spite of increasing years and decreasing health 
— "I have," he said, " seven distinct diseases, but am 
otherwise pretty well " — the indefatigable pamphleteer 
had not yet done wath controversy. In 1842 he 
published three Letters on the Mismanagement of 

1(1809-1878). 



190 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. 

Kailways,^ and in 1843 two on a tendency displayed 
by the "drab-coloured men of Pennsylvania" to re- 
pudiate the interest on their State's bonds. On the 
18th of December 1843 he wrote : — 

"My bomb has fallen very successfully in America, and 
the list of killed and wounded is extensive. I have several 
quires of paper sent me every day, calling me monster, thief, 
atheist, deist, etc." 

" I receive presents of cheese and apples from Americans 
who are advocates for paying debts, and very abusive letters 
in print and in manuscript from those who are not." 

All this time, in spite of continual discomfort from 
gout and asthma, he kept up his merry interest in his 
friends' concerns, his enjoyment of good company, 
and his kindness to young people. Here is a charm- 
ing letter, written in September 1843 to his special 
favourite. Miss Georgiana Harcourt,^ daughter of the 
Archbishop of York : — 

"I suppose you will soon be at Bishopthorpe, surrounded 
by the Sons of the Prophets. What a charming existence, 
to live in the midst of holy people ; to know that nothing 
profane can approach you ; to be certain that a Dissenter can 
no more be found in the Palace than a snake in Ireland, or 
ripe fruit in Scotland; to have your society strong, and 
undiluted by the laity ; to bid adieu to human learning, 
to feast on the Canons, and revel in the xxxix. Articles. 
Happy Georgiana 1 " 

At the beginning of 1844 he wrote, "I am toler- 
ably well, but intolerably old." He complained of 
" nothing but weakness, and loss of nervous energy." 
" I look as strong as a cart-horse, but cannot get round 
the garden without resting once or twice." Soon he 

1 In these a special appeal is made to " our youthful Gladstone," 
then receutly appointed Vice-President of the Board of Trade. 

2 Afterwards Mrs. Malcolm : died in 1886. 



VI.] COLLECTED WORKS 191 

was back again at St. Paul's, preacliing a sermon on 
Peace, and rebuking the ''excessive proneness to 
War.'' " I shall try the same subject again — a subject 
utterly untouched by the clergy."^ The summer 
passed in its usual occupations, and on the 28th of 
July he preached for the last time in the pulpit 
of the Cathedral. His subject was the right use of 
Sunday; and the sermon was a strong prote^st against 
the increasing secularization of the holy day. The 
best ways of employing Sunday, he said, were Worship, 
Self-Examination, and Preparation for Death. The 
sermon ended with some words which indicate the 
sense of impending change : — 

" I never take leave of any one, for any length of time, 
without a deep impression upon my mind of the uncertainty 
of human life, and the probability that we may meet uo 
more in this world." 2 

He now left London for Combe Elorey. "I dine 
with the rich in London, and physic the poor in the 
country ; passing from the sauces of Dives to the sores 
of Lazarus." His bodily discomforts increased, but his 
love of fun never diminished. He wrote as merrily as 
ever to Miss Harcourt : — 

" Neither of us, dear Georgiana, would consent to survive 
the ruin of the Chm'ch. You would plunge a poisoned pin 

1 He said afterwards that this Sermon on Peace was really 
Channing's. 

2 Compare his letter on parting from his friends at Edin- 
burgh, quoted by Lady Holland: — "All adieus are melancholy; 
and principally, I believe, because they put us in mind of tha 
last of all adieus, when the apothecary, and the heir-apparent, 
and the nurse who weeps for pay, surround the bed; when the 
curate, engaged to dine three miles off, mumbles hasty prayers; 
when the dim eye closes for ever in the midst of empty pill-boxes, 
gallipots, phials, and jugs of barley-water." 



192 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. vi. 

into your heart, and I should swallow the leaf of a sermon 
dipped in hydro-cyanic acid." 

In October, after an alarming attack of breathless- 
ness and giddiness, he returned to London. In Green 
Street he was happy in the proximity and skill of his 
son-in-law. Dr. Holland, and " a suite of rooms perfectly 
fitted up for illness and death." This phrase occurs 
in the last of his published letters, dated the 7th of 
November 1844. It was now pronounced that his 
disease was water on the chest, caused by an un- 
suspected affection of the heart. He was entirely 
confined to his bed, perfectly aware of his condition, 
and keenly grateful for the kindness and sympathy of 
friends. His daughter writes : — 

" My father died at peace with himself and with all 
the world ; anxious, to the last, to promote the comfort 
and happiness of others. He sent messages of kindness 
and forgiveness to the few he thought had injured him. 
Almost his last act was, bestowing a small living of 
£120 per annum on a poor, worthy, and friendless 
clergyman, who had lived a long life of struggle with 
poverty on £40 per annum. Full of happiness and 
gratitude, the clergyman entreated he might be allowed 
to see my father ; but the latter so dreaded any agita- 
tion that he most unwillingly consented, saying, ' Then 
he must not thank me ; I am too weak to bear it.' He 
entered, — my father gave him a few words of advice, 
— the clergyman silently pressed his hand, and blessed 
his death-bed. Surely such blessings are not given 
in vain!" 

Sydney Smith died on the 22nd of February 1845, 
and was buried by the side of his son Douglas in the 
Cemetery at Kensal Green. 



CHAPTER VII 

CHARACTERISTICS — HUMOUR — POLITICS — CULTURE — 
THEORIES OF LIFE RELIGION 

What Sydney Smith, was to the outward eye we 
know from an admirable portrait by Eddis^ belong- 
ing to his grand-daughter, Miss Caroline Holland. 
He had a long and slightly aquiline nose, of the type 
which gives a peculiar trenchancy to the countenance ; 
a strongly developed chin, thick white hair,^ and black 
eyebrows. His complexion was fresh, inclining to be 
florid. In figure he was, to use his own phrase, " of 
the family of Falstaff." Ticknor described him as 
"corpulent but not gross." Macaulay spoke of his 
" rector-like amplitude and rubicundity." He was of 
middle height, rather above it than below, and sturdily 
built. He used to quote a saying from one of his con- 
temporaries at Oxford — " Sydney, your sense, wit, and 
clumsiness always give me the idea of an Athenian 
cartery Except on ceremonious occasions, he was 
careless about his dress. His daughter says : — " His 
neckcloth always looked like a pudding tied round 
his throat, and the arrangement of his garments 
seemed more the result of accident than design." 

1 Eden Upton Eddis (1812-1901). 

2 Miss Holland writes — " His hair, when I knew him, was beau- 
tifully fine, silvery, and abundant; rather tailU en 6rosse, like a 
Frenchman's." 

o 193 



194 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. 

His manner in society was cordial, unrestrained, 
and even boisterous. " I live," lie said in an admira- 
ble figure, " with ojoen doors and windows." His poor 
parishioners regarded him with " Si curious mixture 
of reverence and grin." ^ His daughter says that, "on 
entering the pulpit, the calm dignity of his eye, mien, 
and voice, made one feel that he was indeed, and felt 
himself to be, ' the pastor standing between our God 
and His people,' to teach His laws, to declare His 
judgments, and proclaim His mercies." 

Enough has been quoted from his writings to give 
the reader a clear notion of his style. In early life 
it was not scrupulously correct,^ and to the end it was 
marked here and there by an archaism such as " I 
have strove," and "they are rode over." It was 
singularly uninvolved and uncomplicated, and was 
animated, natural, and vigorous in the highest degree. 
As years went on, it gained both in ease and in accu- 
racy, but never lost either its force or its resonance. 
It ran up and down the whole gamut of the English 
tongue, from sesquipedalian classicisms (which he gen- 
erally used to heighten a comic effect) to one-syllabled 
words of the homeliest Anglo-Saxon. His punctuation 
was careless, and the impression produced by his writ- 
ten composition is that of a man who wrote exactly as 
he spoke, without pause, premeditation, or amendment ; 
who was possessed by the subject on which he was 
writing, and never laid down the pen till that subject 
lived and breathed in the written page.^ Here and 

1 Lord Houghton. 

2 A hostile reviewer of his Sermons quotes from them such 
phrases as — "Lays hid," "Has sprang," "Has drank," "Rai-ely 
or ever." 3 See p. 90. 



VII.] HUMOUR 195 

there, indeed, it is easy to note an unusual care and 
elaboration in tlie structure of tlie sentences and the 
cadence of the sound, and then the style rises to a 
very high level of rhetorical dignity. 

Enough too has been quoted, both from his writings 
and from his conversation, to illustrate the quality and 
quantity of his humour. It bubbled up in him by a 
spontaneous process, and flowed over into whatever he 
wrote or said. Macaulay described his "rapid, loud, 
laughing utterance," and adds — " Sydney talks from 
the impulse of the moment, and his fun is quite inex- 
haustible." He was, I think, the greatest humourist 
whose jokes have come down to us in an authentic and 
unmutilated form. Almost alone among professional 
jokers, he made his merriment — rich, natural, fantas- 
tic, unbridled as it was — subserve the serious purposes 
of his life and writing. Each joke was a link in an 
argument ; each sarcasm was a moral lesson. Peter 
Plymley, and the Letters to Archdeacon Singleton, the 
essays on America and on Persecuting Bishops, will 
probably be read as long as the Tale of a Tub or 
Macaulay's review of "Satan" Montgomery; while 
of detached and isolated jokes — pure freaks of fun 
clad in literary garb — an incredible number, current 
in daily converse, deduce their birth from this incom- 
parable clergyman.^ "In ability," wrote Macaulay 
in 1850, " I should say that Jeffrey was higher, but 
Sydney rarer. I would rather have been Jeffrey ; but 
there will be several Jeffreys before there is a Sydney." 

It would of course be absurd to pretend that all his 

1 1 have not attempted to make a catalogue of these jokes. 
Such catalogues will be found in the previous Memoirs of Sydney 
Smith, and in Sir Wemyss Reid's Life of Lord Houghton. 



196 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. 

jokes were of an equally high order. In his essays 
and public letters he is always and supremely good ; 
in his private letters and traditional table-talk he 
descends to the level of his correspondent or his com- 
pany. Thus, in spite of his own protests against 
playing on words, he found his clerk " a man of great 
amen-ity of disposition." He complimented his friends 
Mrs. Tighe and Mrs. Cuffe as "the cuff that every one 
would wear, the tie that no one would loose." His 
fondness for Lord Grey's family led him to call him- 
self " Grey-men-ivorous." When the Hollands were 
staying with him, "his house was as full of hollands 
as a ginshop." He nicknamed Sir George Philips's 
home near Manchester Philippi. He ascribed his 
brother's ugly mansion at Cheam to "Chemosh, the 
abomination of Moab." In 1831 he wrote to his 
friend Mrs. Meynell that "the French Government 
was far from stable — like MeynelPs^ horses at the 
end of a long day's chase." When a lady asked him 
for an epitaph on her pet dog Spot, he proposed " Out, 
damned Spot ! " but, " strange to say, she did not think 
it sentimental enough." When William Cavendish,^ 
who had been Second Wrangler, married Lady Blanche 
Howard, Sydney wrote — "Euclid leads Blanche to 
the altar — a strange choice for him, as she has not an 
angle about her." It was with reference to this kind 
of pleasantry that he said : — 

" A joke goes a great way in the country. I have known 
one last pretty well for seven years. I remember making a 

1 Hugo Charles Meynell-Ingram (1784-1869) , of Hoar Cross and 
Temple Newsam. 

2 (1808-1891), became Tth Duke of Devonshire in 1858. 



VII.] HUMOUR 197 

joke after a meeting of the clergy, in Yorkshire, where there 
was a Rev. Mr. Buckle, who never spoke when I gave his 
health. I said that he was a buckle without a tongue. Most 
persons within hearing laughed, but my next neighbour sat 
unmoved and sunk in thought. At last, a quarter of an hour 
after we had all done, he suddenly nudged me, exclaiming, 
'I see now what you meant, Mr. Smith; you meant a joke.' 
'Yes,' I said, 'sir; I believe I did.' Upon which he began 
laughing so heartily, that I thought he would choke, and 
was obliged to pat him on the back." 

A graver fault than this boyish love of punning 
is the undeniable vein of coarseness which here and 
there disfigures Sydney Smith's controversial method. 
In 1810 he wrote, very characteristically, about his 
friend Lord Grey — "His deficiency is a want of 
executive coarseness." This is a fault with which he 
could never have charged himself. His own " execu- 
tive coarseness " is referable in part to the social 
standard of the day, when ladies as refined as the 

Miss Berrys "d d" the too-hot tea-kettle, and 

Canning referred to a political opponent as "the 
revered and ruptured Member." In a similar vein 
Sydney jokes incessantly about skin-disease in Scot- 
land ; writes of a neighbour w^hose manners he dis- 
liked that " she was as cold as if she were in the last 
stage of blue cholera " ; and, after his farmers had been 
dining with him, says that " they were just as tipsy 
as farmers ought to be when dining with the parson." 

When he came to dealing publicly with a political 
opponent, he seems to have thought that, the coarser 
Avere his illustrations, the more domestic and personal 
his allusions, the better for the cause which he served. 
The Letters of Peter Plymley abound in medical and 
obstetrical imagery. The effect of the Orders in 



198 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. 

Council on the health of Europe supplies endless jokes. 
Peter roars with laughter at the thought of his sister- 
in-law, Mrs. Abraham Plymley, " led away captive by 
an amorous Gaul." Nothing can be nastier (or more 
apt) than his comparison between the use of humour 
in controversy and that of the small-tooth comb in 
domestic life ; nothing less delicate than the imaginary 
" Suckling Act " in which he burlesques Lord Shaftes- 
bury's Ten Hours Bill. He barbs his attacks on an 
oppressive Government by jokes about the ugliness of 
Perceval's face and the poverty of Canning's relations 
— the pensions conferred on " Sophia " and " Caroline," 
their " national veal " and " public tea " ; and the 
" clouds of cousins arriving by the waggon." When a 
bishop has insulted him, he replies with an insinuation 
that the bishop obtained his preferment by fraud and 
misrepresentation,^ and jeers at him for having begun 
life as a nobleman's Private Tutor, called by the 
" endearing but unmajestic name of Dick." It is only 
fair to say that these aberrations from good taste and 
good feeling became less and less frequent as years 
went on. That they ever were permitted to deform the 
splendid advocacy of great causes is due to the fact 
that, when Sydney Smith began to write, the influ- 
ence of Smollett and his imitators was still powerful. 
Burke's obscene diatribes against the French Ee volu- 
tion were still quoted and admired. Nobody had yet 
made any emphatic protest against the beastliness of 
Swift or the brutalities of Junius.^ 

1 This insinuation was quite unfounded. 

2 It is pleasant to cite the testimony of Lord Houghton, who 
assured Mr. Stuart Reid that he " never knew, except once, Sydney- 
Smith to make a jest on any religious subject; and then he 



VII.] POLITICS 199 

When tliese necessary deductions have been made, 
we can return to the most admiring eulogy. In 1835 
Sydney wrote : — 

" Catch me, if you can, in any one illiberal sentiment, or in 
any opinion which I have need to recant ; and that, after 
twenty years' scribbling upon all subjects." 

It was no mean boast, and it was absolutely justified 
by the record. From first to last he was the convinced, 
eager, and devoted friend of Freedom, and that with- 
out distinction of place or race or colour. He would 
make no terms with a man who temporized about the 
Slave-Trade. — 

" No man should ever hold parley with it, but speak of it 
with abhorrence, as the greatest of all human abominations." 

The toleration of Slavery was the one and grave 
exception to his unstinted admiration of the United 
States, which afforded, in his opinion, "the most 
magnificent picture of human happiness " which the 
world had ever seen. And this because in America, 
more than in any other country, each citizen was free 
to live his own life, manage his own affairs, and work 
out his own destiny, under the protection of just and 
equal laws. As regards political institutions in Eng- 
land, he seems to have been converted rather gradually 
to the belief that Reform was necessary. In 1819 he 
wrote to his friend Jeffrey : — 

" The case that the people have is too strong to be resisted ; 
an answer may be made to it, which will satisfy enlightened 
people perhaps, but none that the mass will be satisfied with. 

immediately withdrew his words and seemed ashamed that he had 
uttered them." 



200 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. 

I am doubtful whether it is not your duty and my duty to 
become moderate Reformers, to keep off worse." 

In 1820 he wrote : — "I think all wise men should 
begin to turn their faces Eeform-wards." In 1821 he 
writes about the state of parties in the House of 
Commons : — 

" Of all ingenious instruments of despotism, I most com- 
mend a popular assembly where the majority are paid and 
hired, and a few bold and able men, by their brave speeches, 
make the people believe they are free." 

And then again, with regard to religions liberty, 
what can be finer than his protest against the spirit 
of persecution? — 

" I admit there is a vast luxury in selecting a particular set 
of Christians and in worrying them as a boy worries a puppy 
dog; it is an amusement in which all the young English are 
brought up from their earliest days. I like the idea of saying 
to men who use a different hassock from me, that till they 
change their hassock, they shall never be Colonels, Aldermen, 
or Parliament-men. While I am gTatifying my personal 
insolence respecting religious forms, I fondle myself into an 
idea that I am religious, and that I am doing my duty in the 
most exemplary (as I certainly am in the most easy) way." 

It may perhaps be dangerous to persecute the Eoman 
Catholics of Ireland. They are many, they are spirited 
— they may turn round and hurt us. It might be 
wiser to try our hands on some small body like the 
Evangelicals of Clapham or the followers of William 
Wilberforce (at whom in passing he aims a Shandean 
sneer). — 

" "We will gratify the love of insolence and power : we will 
enjoy the old orthodox sport of witnessing the impotent anger 
of men compelled to submit to civil degradation, or to sacrifice 
their notions of truth to ours. And all this we may do without 



VII.] POLITICS 201 

the slightest risk, because their numbers are (as yet) not very 
considerable. Cruelty and injustice must, of course, exist : 
but why connect them with danger ? Why torture a bull-dog, 
when you can get a frog or a rabbit? I am sure my proposal 
will meet with the most universal approbation. Do not be 
apprehensive of any opposition from Ministers. If it is a case 
of hatred, we are sure that one man ^ will defend it by the 
Gospel : if it abridges human freedom, we know that another ^ 
will find precedents for it in the Revolution." 

As years went on, he was sometimes displeased 
by the doings of his Liberal friends, but he was 
never " stricken by the palsy of candour " ; he never 
forsook the good cause for w^hich he had fought so 
steadily, never made terms with political deserters. 
After the Conservative triumph of 1841 he wrote : — 
" The country is in a state of political transition, and 
the shabby are preparing their consciences and opinions 
for a tack." 

But, though he was so keen and so consistent a 
champion of civil and religious freedom, he was a 
sworn foe to anarchy and licence. Like most people 
who had seen the later stages of the French Revolu- 
tion, he had a holy horror of mob-law and mob-justice. 
" If I am to be a slave," he said, " I would rather be 
the slave of a king than of a rabble"; but he ve- 
hemently objected to being the slave of either. He 
likened Democracy and Despotism to the " two tubes of 
a double-barrelled pistol," which menaced the life of the 
State. " The democrats are as much to be kept at bay 
with the left hand as the Tories are with the right." 
"A thousand years," he wrote in 1838, "have scarce 
sufficed to make our blessed England what it is : an 
hour may lay it in the dust." 

1 Spencer Perceval. 2 Lord Hawkesbury. 



202 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. 

After the riots at Bristol in 1831, consequent on the 
rejection of the Eeform Bill, he strenuously demanded 
stern punishment for the rioters. He wrote to the 
Prime Minister : — 

" Pray do not be good-natured about Bristol. I must have 
ten people hanged, and twenty transported, and thirty im- 
prisoned ; it is absohitely necessary to give the multitude 
a severe blow, for their conduct at Bristol has been most 
atrocious. You will save lives by it in the end. There is 
no plea of want, as there was in the agricultural riots." 

You ivill save lives by it in the end. There spoke the 
truly humanitarian spirit which does not shrink from 
drawing the sword at the bidding of real necessity, 
but asks itself once and again whether any proposed 
effusion of blood is really demanded by the exigencies 
of the moral law. 

On questions of peace and war, Sydney Smith was 
always on the right side.^ He saw as clearly as the 
most clamorous patriot that England was morally 
bound to defend her existence and her freedom. He 
exhorted her to rally all her forces and strive with 
agonies and energies against the anti-human ambition 
of Napoleon. And, when once the great deliverance 
was achieved, he turned again to the enjoyment and 
the glorification of Peace. — 

"Let fools praise conquerors, and say the great Napoleon 
pulled down this kingdom and destroyed that army : we will 
thank God for a King ^ who has derived his quiet glory from 
the peace of his realm." 

"The atrocities, and horrors, and disgusts of war have never 
been half enough insisted upon by the teachers of the people ; 
but the worst of evils and the greatest of follies have been 

1 See Appendix E. 2 William iv. 



VII.] POLITICS 203 

varnished over with specious names, and the gigantic robbers 
and murderers of the world have been holden up for imita- 
tion to the weak eyes of youth." 

No wars, except the very few which we really 
required for national self-defence, could attract his 
sympathy. Wars of intervention in the affairs of other 
nations, even when undertaken for excellent objects, 
he regarded with profound mistrust. 

When, in 1823, the nascent liberties of Spain were 
threatened, he wrote : — 

" I am afraid we shall go to war ; I am sorry for it. I see 
every day in the world a thousand acts of oppression which I 
should like to resent, but I cannot afford to play the Quixote. 
Why are the English to be the sole vindicators of the human 
race ? " 

And again : — 

" For God's sake, do not drag me into another war ! I am 
worn down, and worn out, with crusading and defending 
Europe, and protecting mankind ; I must think a little of 
myself. I am sorry for the Spaniards — I am sorry for the 
Greeks — I deplore the fate of the Jews ; the people of the 
Sandwich Islands are groaning under the most detestable 
tyranny; Bagdad is oppressed — I do not like the present 
state of the Delta — Thibet is not comfortable. Am I to fight 
for all these people ? The world is bursting with sin and 
sorrow. Am I to be champion of the Decalogue, and to be 
eternally raising fleets and armies to make all men good and 
happy? We have just done saving Europe, and I am afraid 
the consequence will be, that we shall cut each other's 
throats." 

In 1830 he wrote to his friend Lady Holland about 
her son,^ afterwards General Fox : — 

" I am very glad to see Charles in the Guards. He will 

1 Charles Richard Fox (1796-1873). 



204 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. 

now remain at home ; for I trust that there will be no more 
embarkation of the Guards while I live, and that a captain 
of the Guards will be as ignorant of the colour of blood as the 
rector of a parish. We have had important events enough 
within the last twenty years. May all remaining events be 
culinary, amorous, literary, or any thing but political! " 

And so again, according to Lord Houghton, he said 
in later life : — 

" I have spent enough and fought enough for other nations. 
I must think a little of myself. I want to sit under my own 
bramble and sloe-tree with my own great-coat and umbrella." 

This is no fatty degeneration of the chivalrous spirit. 
It is merely the old doctrine of Non-intervention speak- 
ing in a lighter tone. 

An account of a man's personal characteristics must 
contain some estimate of his aesthetic sense. This 
was not very strongly developed in Sydney Smith. 
He admired the beauties of a smiling landscape, such, 
as he saw in the Vale of Taunton, and hated grim- 
ness and barrenness such as he remembered at Harro- 
gate. " I thought it the most heaven- forgotten country 
under the sun when I saw it ; there were only nine 
mangy fir-trees there, and even they all leaned away 
from it." He enjoyed bright colours and sweet scents, 
and had a passion for light. His views of Art were 
primitive. We have seen that he preferred gas to 
Correggio. He admired West,^ and did not admire 
Haydon.^ He bought pictures for the better decora- 
tion of his drawing-room, and, when they did not please 
him, had them altered to suit his taste. — 

"Look at that sea-piece, now; what would you desire 

1 Benjamin West (1738-1820). 

2 Benjamin Robert Haydon (178G-1846). 



VII.] CULTURE 205 

more? It is true, the moon in the corner was rather dingy 
when I first bought it ; so I had a new moon put in for 
half-a-crown, and now I consider it perfect." 

This perhaps may be regarded as burlesque, and 
so may his sympathetic remark to the gushing con- 
noisseur — 

"I got into dreadful disgrace with him once, when, stand- 
ing before a picture at Bowood, he exclaimed, turning to me, 
' Immense breadth of light and shade ! ' I innocently said, 
' Yes ; — about an inch and a half.' He gave me a look that 
ought to have killed me." 

But his gratitude to his young friend Lady Mary 
Bennet, who covered the walls of his Eectory with 
the sweet products of her pencil, is only too palpably 
sincere. It may perhaps be imputed to him for aesthetic 
virtue that he considered the national monuments in 
St. Paul's, with the sole exception of Dr. Johnson's, 
" a disgusting heap of trash." It is less satisfactory 
that he found the Prince Kegent's "suite of golden 
rooms " at Carlton House " extremely magnificent." 

To music he was more sympathetic, but even here his 
sympathies had their limitations. Music in the minor 
key made him melancholy, and had to be discontinued 
when he was in residence at St. Paul's ; ^ and this was 
not his only musical prejudice. — 

" Nothing can be more disgusting than an oratorio. How 
absurd to see five hundred people fiddling like madmen about 
the Israelites in the Red Sea ! " 

" Yesterday I heard Rubini and Grisi, Lablache and Tam- 
burini. The opera, by Bellini, / Puritani, was dreadfully 

1 1 am indebted for this tradition to the Rev. H. S. Holland, D.D., 
Canon of St. Paul's. 



206 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. 

tiresome, and unintelligible in its plan. I hope it is the last 
opera I shall ever go to." 

" Semiramis would be to me pure misery. I love music 
very little. I hate acting. I have the worst opinion of 
Semiramis herself, and the whole thing seems to me so child- 
ish and so foolish that I cannot abide it. Moreover, it would 
be rather out of etiquette for a Canon of St. Paul's to go to 
the opera; and, where etiquette prevents me from doing 
things disagreeable to myself, I am a perfect martinet." 

After a Musical Festival at York he writes to Lady 
Holland : — 

" I did not go once. Music for such a length of time (un- 
less under sentence of a jury) I will not submit to. What 
pleasure is there in pleasure, if quantity is not attended to, 
as well as quality ? I know nothing more agreeable than a 
dinner at Holland House ; but it must not begin at ten in 
the morning, and last till six. I should be incapable for the 
last four hours of laughing at Lord Holland's jokes, eating 
Raffaelle's cakes, or repelling Mr. Allen's ^ attack upon the 
Church." 

Yet, in spite of these limitations, lie took lessons 
on the piano, and often warbled in the domestic circle. 
In 1843 he writes — "I am learning to sing some of 
Moore's songs, which I think I shall do to great per- 
fection." His daughter says, with filial piety, that, 
when he had once learnt a song, he sang it very cor- 
rectly, and, " having a really fine voice, often encored 
Mmsel/y A lady who visited him at Combe Florey 
corroborates this account, saying that after dinner he 
said to his wife, "I crave for Music, Mrs. Smith. 
Music ! Music ! " and sang, " with his rich sweet voice, 
A Few Gay Soarings Yet. " In old age he said : — 

" If I were to begin life again, I would devote much time 

1 John Allen was nicknamed *' Lady Holland's Atheist." 



VII.] CULTURE 207 

to music. All musical people seem to me happy ; it is the 
most engrossing pursuit ; almost the only innocent and un- 
punished passion." 

When we turn from the aesthetic to the literary- 
faculty, we find it a good deal better developed. That 
lie was a sound scholar in the sense of being able 
to read the standard classics with facility and enjoy- 
ment we know from his own statements. In the early 
days of the Edinburgh Review lie perceived and ex- 
tolled the fine scholarship of Monk ^ and Blomfield^ 
and Maltby.^ The fact that Marsh* was a man of 
learning mitigated the severity of the attack on 
"Persecuting Bishops." His glowing tribute to the 
accomplishments of Sir James Mackintosh is qualified 
by the remark that " the Greek language has never 
crossed the Tweed in any great force." In biief, he 
understood and respected classical scholarship. He 
was keenly interested in English literature, and kept 
abreast of what was produced in France ; but German 
he seems to have regarded as a kind of joke, and Italian 
he only mentions as part of a young lady's education. 

In 1819 be wrote to his son at Westminster : — 

" For the English poets, I will let you off at present with 
Milton, Dryden, Pope, and Shakespeare; and remember, 
always in books, keep the best company. Don't read a line 
of Ovid till you have mastered Virgil ; nor a line of Thom- 
son till you have exhausted Pope ; nor of Massinger, till 
you are familiar with Shakespeare." 

He thought Locke " a fine, satisfactory sort of 
a fellow, but very long-winded " ; considered Horace 
Walpole's " the best wit ever published in the shape of 

1 Bishop of Gloucester. 2 Bishop of London. 

8 Bishop of Durham. ■* Bishop of Peterborough. 



208 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. 

letters " ; and dismissed Madame de Sevigne as " very 
much over-praised." Of Montaigne he says — " He 
thinks aloud, that is his great merit, but does not 
think remarkably well. Mankind has improved in 
thinking and writing since that period." 

It was, of course, part of his regular occupation to 
deal with new books in the Edinhurgh ; and, apart 
from these formal reviews, his letters are full of curious 
comments. In 1814 he declines to read the Edinburgh's 
criticism of Wordsworth, because "the subject is to me 
so very uninteresting." In the same year he writes : — 

" I think very highly of Waverley, and was inclined to 
suspect, in reading it, that it was written by Miss Scott of 
Ancrum." 

In 1818 he wrote about The Heart of Midlothian : — 

" I think it excellent — quite as good as any of his novels, 
excepting that in which Claverhoiise is introduced, and of 
which I forget the name. ... He repeats his characters, 
but it seems they will bear repetition. Who can read the 
novel without laughing and crying twenty times? " 

In 1820 : — 

" Have you read Ivanhoe ? It is the least dull, and the 
most easily read through, of all Scott's novels ; but there are 
many more powerful." 

Later in the same year : — 

"I have just read The Abbot; it is far above common 
novels, but of very inferior execution to his others, and 
hardly worth reading. He has exhausted the subject of 
Scotland, and worn out the few characters that the early 
periods of Scotch history could supply him with. Meg 
JNIerrilies appears afresh in every novel." 

In 1821 : — 

" The Pirate is certainly one of the least fortunate of Sir 



VII.] CULTURE 209 

Walter's productions. It seems now that he cannot write 
without Meg Merrilies and Dominie Sampson. One other 
such novel, and there 's an end; but who can last for ever? 
who ever lasted so long?" 

In 1823 : — 

" Peveril is a moderate production, between his best and 
his worst ; rather agreeable than not." 

His judgment on TJie Bride of Lammermoor is indeed 
deplorable. He thought it like Scott's previous work, 
but " laboured in an inferior way, and more careless, 
^vith many repetitions of himself. Caleb is overdone. 
. . . The catastrophe is shocking and disgusting." ^ 

Incidentally we find him praising Lister's Granby, 
and Hope's jinastasius. He early discovered and 
consistently admired Macaulay, though he drew the 
line at the Lays of Ancient Rome, on the ground that 
he "abhorred all Grecian and Roman subjects." It is 
curious to note the number and variety of new books 
which lie more or less commends, and which are now 
equally and completely forgotten. As we come nearer 
our own times, however, we find an important con- 
version. In 1838 he writes : — 

" NicUehy is very good. I stood out against Mr. Dickens 
as long as I could, but he has conquered me." 

In 1843 he w^rites to Dickens : — 

" Pecksniff and his daughters, and Pinch, are admirable 
— quite first-rate painting, such as no one but yourself can 
execute. Chuffey is admirable. I never read a finer piece 
of writing." 

And, when Dickens asks him to dinner, he replies : — 
" I accept your obliging invitation conditionally. If I am 

1 Quoted by Mr. Stuart Reid. 



210 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. 

invited by any man of greater genius than yourself, or one 
by whose works I have been more completely interested, I 
will repudiate you, and dine with the more splendid phe- 
nomenon of the two." 

His crowning glory in the matter of literary criticism 
is that, as Ruskin told us, he was the first man in the 
literary circles of London to assert the value of Modem 
Painters. "He said it was a work of transcendent 
talent, presented the most original views in the most 
elegant and j)owerful language, and would work a 
complete revolution in the world of taste." ^ 

With the physical sciences Sydney Smith seems to 
have had no real acquaintance, unless we include among 
them the art of the apothecary, which all through life he 
studied diligently and practised courageously. But he 
recommended Botany, with some confidence, as " certain 
to delight little girls"; and his friendship with the 
amiable and instructive Mrs. Marcet^ gave him a 
smattering of scientific terms. In a discussion on the 
Inferno he invented a new torment especially for that 
excellent lady's benefit. — 

" You should be doomed to listen, for a thousand years, to 
conversations between Caroline and Emily, where Caroline 
should always give wrong explanations in chemistry, and 
Emily in the end be unable to distinguish an acid from an 
alkali." 

When we turn, from these smaller matters of taste 
and accomplishment, to the general view of life, 
Sydney Smith would seem, at first sight, to have 
been a Utilitarian ; and yet he declared himself 

1 Prxterita, vol. ii. chap. ix. 

2 Jane Marcet (1769-1858), authoress of Conversations on 
Chemistry. 



VII.] THEORIES OF LIEE 211 

in vigorous terms an opponent of the Utilitarian 
School. — 

" That school treat mankind as if they were mere machines ; 
the feelings or affections never enter into their calculations. 
If everything is to be sacrificed to utility, why do you bury 
your grandmother ? why don't you cut her into small pieces 
at once, and make portable soup of her ? " 

In a similar vein, he said of his friend George Grote 
that he would have been an important politician if the 
world had been a chess-board. Any system, social, 
political, or philosophical, which did not directly con- 
cern itself with the wants and feelings and impulses of 
human flesh and blood, appealed to him in vain. 

"How foolish," he wrote, " and how profligate, to show that 
the principle of general utility has no foundation, that it is 
often opposed to the interests of the individual ! If this be 
true, there is an end of all reasoning and all morals : and if 
any man asks, Why am I to do what is generally useful ? he 
should not be reasoned with, but called rogue, rascal, etc., and 
the mob should be excited to break his windows." 

He liked what he called "useful truth.'^ He could 
make no terms with thinkers who were "more fond 
of disputing on mind and matter than on anything 
which can have a reference to the real world, inhabited 
by real men, women, and children." Indeed, all his 
thinking was governed by his eager and generous 
humanitarianism. He thought all speculation, which 
did not bear directly on the welfare and happiness 
of human beings, a waste of ingenuity; and yet, at 
the same time, he taught that all practical systems, 
which left out of account the emotional and sentimental 
side of man, were incomplete and ineffectual. This 
higher side of his nature showed itself in his lively 



212 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. 

affections, his intense love of home and wife and 
children, his lifelong tenacity of friendship, and his 
overflowing sympathy for the poor, the abject, and 
the suffering. 

"The haunts of Happiness," he wrote, "are varied, and 
rather unaccountable ; but I have more often seen her among 
little children, and by home firesides, and in country houses, 
thau anywhere else, — at least, I think so." 

When his mother died, he wrote — " Everyone must 
go to his grave with his heart scarred like a soldier's 
body," and, when he lost his infant boy, he said — 
" Children are horribly insecure : the life of a parent is 
the life of a gambler.'^ 

His more material side was well exhibited by the 
catalogue of "Modern Changes" which he compiled 
in old age, heading it with the characteristic couplet : — 

"The good of ancient times let others state, 
I think it lucky I was born so late." i 

It concludes with the words, " Even in the best society 

one third of the gentlemen at least were always drunk." 

This reminds us that, in the matter of temperance, 

Sydney Smith was far in advance of his time. That 

he was no 

" budge doctor of the Stoic fur, 
Praising the lean and sallow Abstinence," 

is plain enough from his correspondence. " The wretch- 
edness of human life," he wrote in 1817, " is only to be 
encountered upon the basis of meat and wine " ; but he 
had a curiously keen sense of the evils induced by 
" the sweet poyson." ^ As early as 1814 he urged Lord 
Holland to "leave off wine entirely," for, though 

1 See Appendix C. ^ Comus. 



VII.] THEORIES OF LIFE 213 

never guilty of excess, Holland showed a " respectable 
and dangerous plenitude." After a visit to London 
in the same year, Sydney wrote : — 

" I liked London better than ever I liked it before, and 
simply, I believe, from water-drinking. Without this, London 
is stupefaction and inflammation. It is not the love of wine, 
but thoughtlessness and unconscious imitation : other men 
poke out their hands for the revolving wine, and one does the 
same, without thinking of it. All people above the condition 
of labourers are ruined by excess of stimulus and nourishment, 
clergy included. I never yet saw any gentleman who ate and 
drank as little as was reasonable." 

In 1828 he wrote to Lady Holland (of Holland 
House) : — 

" I not only was never better, but never half so well : in- 
deed I find I have been very ill all my life, without knowing 
it. Let me state some of the goods arising from abstaining 
from all fermented liquors. First, sweet sleep ; having never 
known what sweet sleep was, I sleep like a baby or a plough- 
boy. If I wake, no needless terrors, no black visions of life, 
but pleasing hopes and pleasing recollections : Holland House, 
past and to come! If I dream, it is not of lions and tigers, 
but of Easter dues and tithes. Secondly, I can take longer 
walks, and make gTeater exertions, without fatigue. My 
understanding is improved, and I comprehend Political 
Economy. Only one evil ensues from it: I am in such 
extravagant spirits that I must look out for some one who 
will bore and depress me." 

In 1834 he wrote : — 

" I am better in health, avoiding all fermented liquors, and 
drinking nothing but London water, with a million insects in 
every drop. He who drinks a tumbler of London water has 
literally in his stomach more animated beings than there are 
men, women, and children on the face of the globe." 

In spite of this disquieting analysis he persevered, 
and wrote two years later : — 



214 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. 

" I have had no gout, nor any symptom of it : by eating 
little, and drinking only water, I keep body and mind in a 
serene state, and s^^are the great toe. Looking back at my 
past life, I find that all my miseries of body and mind have 
proceeded from indigestion. Young people in early life should 
be thoroughly taught the moral, intellectual, and physical 
evils of indigestion." 

Saba, Lady Holland, who had a discreet but pro- 
voking trick of omitting the proper name wherever we 
specially thirst to know it, thus reports her father's 
conversation : — 

" Now, I mean not to drink one drop of wine to-day, and 
I shall be mad with spirits. I always am when I drink no 
wine. It is curious the effect a thimbleful of wine has upon 
me ; I feel as flat as 's jokes ; it destroys my understand- 
ing : I forget the number of the Muses, and think them xxxix, 
of course ; and only get myself right again by repeating the 
lines, and finding ' Descend, ye Thirty-Nine ! ' two feet too 
long." 

All this profound interest in the matter of food and 
drink was closely connected in Sydney Smith with a 
clear sense of the influence exercised by the body over 
the soul. — 

" I am convinced digestion is the great secret of life ; and 
that character, talents, virtues, and qualities are powerfully 
affected by beef, mutton, pie-crust, and rich soups. I have 
often thought I could feed or starve men into many virtues 
and vices, and affect them more powerfully with my instru- 
ments of cookery than Timotheus could do formerly with his 
lyre."i 

According to his own accounts of himself he seems, 
like most people who are boisterously cheerful, to 
have had occasional tendencies to melancholy. " An 

1 See Appendix D. 



VII.] THEORIES OF LIFE 215 

extreme depression of spirits," he writes in 1826, " is 
an evil of which I have a full comprehension." But, 
on the other hand, he writes : — 

" I thank God, who has made me poor, that He has made 
me merry. I think it a better gift than much wheat and 
bean-land, with a doleful heart." 

" Mj constitutional gaiety comes to my aid in all the 
difficulties of life ; and the recollection that, having em- 
braced the character of an honest man and a friend to 
rational liberty, I have no business to repine at that medioc- 
rity of fortune which I Jcneiv to be its cousequence." 

The truth would seem to be that, finding, in his 
temperament and circumstances, some predisposing 
causes of melancholy, he refused to sit down under 
the curse and let it poison his life, but took vigor- 
ous measures with himself and his surroundings ; culti- 
vated cheerfulness as a duty, and repelled gloom as 
a disease. He "tried always to live in the Present 
and the Future, and to look upon the Past as so much 
dirty linen." After reading Burke, and praising his 
" beautiful and fruitful imagination," he says — 
"With the politics of so remote a period I do not 
concern myself." He had a robust confidence in the 
cheering virtues of air and exercise, early hours and cold 
water, light and warmth, temperance in tea and coffee 
as well as wine — " Apothegms of old women," as he 
truly said, but tested by universal experience and found 
efficacious. He recommended constant occupation, 
combined with variety of interests, and taught that 
nothing made one feel so happy as the act of doing 
good. He thus describes his own experience, when, 
as Canon of St. Paul's, he had presented a valuable 
living to the friendless son of the deceased incum- 



216 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. 

bent. He announced the presentation to the stricken 
family. — 

" They all burst into tears. It flung me also into a great 
agitation, and I wept and groaned for a long time. Then I 
rose, and said I thought it was very likely to end in their 
keeping a buggy, at which we all laughed as violently. The 
poor old lady, who was sleeping in a garret because she could 
not bear to enter into the room lately inhabited by her hus- 
band, sent for me and kissed me, sobbing with a thousand 
emotions. The charitable physician wept too. ... I never 
passed so remarkable a morning, nor was more deeply im- 
pressed with the sufferings of human life, and never felt 
more thoroughly the happiness of doing good." 

Of all his various remedies against melancholy, the 
one on which he most constantly and most earnestly 
insisted, was the wisdom of " taking short views.'' — 

" Dispel," he said, " that prophetic gloom which dives into 
futurity, to extract sorrow from days and years to come, and 
which considers its own unhappy visions as the decrees of 
Providence. We know nothing of to-morrow : our business 
is to be good and happy to-day." 

Our business is to be good and happy. This dogma 
inevitably suggests the question — What was Sydney 
Smith's religion? First and foremost, he was a 
staunch and consistent Theist. — 

" I hate the insolence, persecution, and intolerance, which 
so often pass under the name of religion, and have fought 
against them ; but I have an unaffected horror of irreligion 
and impiety, and every principle of suspicion and fear would 
be excited in me by a man who professed himself an infidel." i 

1 Compare his attack on Hobbes, of whom he says that his 
"dirty recreation" of smoking did not interrupt any "im- 
moral, irrehgious, or uumathematical track of thought in which 
he happened to be engaged." — Lectures on Moral Philosophy, 
XX vi. 



VII.] RELIGION 217 

In a lighter vein, he talked with dread of travelling 
in a stage-coach with " an Atheist who told me what 
he had said in his heart." ^ And in 1808 he wrote to 
his friend Jeffrey with reference to the tone of the 
Edinburgh Review : — 

" I must beg the favour of you to be explicit on one point. 
Do you mean to take care that the Review shall not profess 
or encourage infidel principles? Unless this is the case, I 
must absolutely give up all thoughts of connecting myself 
with it." 

The grounds on which his theism rested seem, as Sir 
Leslie Stephen points out, to have been exactly those 
which satisfied Paley. Lord Murray, who, though he 
was a judge, does not seem to have been exacting 
about the quality of argument, admiringly relates this 
anecdote of his friend : — 

"A foreigner, on one occasion, indulging in sceptical 
doubts of the existence of an overruling Providence in his 
presence, Sydney, who had observed him evidently well 
satisfied with his repast, said, 'You must admit there is 
great genius and thought in that dish.' ' Admirable ! ' he 
replied ; ' nothing can be better.' ' May I then ask, are you 
prepared to deny the existence of the cook ? ' " 

Of course this is nothing but Paley's illustration of 
the Watch, reproduced in a less impressive form. 

But Sydney Smith was not content with a system of 
thought which provided him with a working hypothesis 
for the construction of the physical universe and the 
conduct of this present life. He looked above and 
beyond ; and reinforced his own faith in immortality 
by an appeal to the general sense of mankind. — 

1 Dixit insipiens in corde suo : Non est Deus. — Psa/m xiv. 



218 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. 

" Who ever thinks of turning into ridicule our great and 
ardent hope of a world to come? Whenever the man of 
humour meddles with these things, he is astonished to find 
that in all the great feelings of their nature the mass of 
mankind always think and act aright ; that they are ready 
enough to laugh, but that they are quite as ready to drive 
away, with indignation and contempt, the light fool who 
comes with the feather of wit to crumble the bulwarks of 
truth, and to beat down the Temples of God. We count 
over the pious spirits of the world, the beautiful writers, the 
great statesmen, all who have invented subtly, who have 
thought deeply, who have executed wisely: — all these are 
proofs that we are destined for a second life ; and it is not 
possible to believe that this redundant vigour, this lavish and 
excessive power, was given for the mere gathering of meat 
and drink. If the only object is present existence, such 
faculties are cruel, are misplaced, are useless. They all show 
us that there is something great awaiting us, — that the soul 
is now young and infantine, springing up into a more per- 
fect life when the body falls into dust." 

" Man is imprisoned here only for a season, to take a bet- 
ter or a worse hereafter, as he deserves it. This old truth 
is the fountain of all goodness, and justice, and kindness 
among men : may we all feel it intimately, obey it perpetu- 
ally, and profit by it eternally ! " 

He was not a theist only, but a Christian. Here 
again, as in the argument from Design, lie followed 
Paley, laid great stress on Evidences, and '' selected his 
train of reasoning with some care from the best writers.'^ 
He said : — " The truth of Christianity depends upon 
its leading facts, and of these we have such evidence 
as ought to satisfy us, till it appears that mankind 
have ever been deceived by proofs as numerous and 
as strong.'' Having convinced himself that the Chris- 
tian religion was true, he was loyal in word and act 
to what he had accepted. He remonstrated vigor- 



VIII.] RELIGION 219 

ously against an " anti-Christian article " which crept 
into the Edinburgh Review ; and felt, as keenly as the 
strongest sacerdotalist or the most fervent Evangelical, 
the boimden duty of defending the body of truth to 
which his ordination had pledged him. 

It can scarcely be contested that his conceptions of 
that truth were, in some grave respects, defective. The 
absolute dominion and overruling providence of God 
are always present to his mind, and he urges as the 
ground of all virtuous effort the Character and Example 
of Christ. But the notion of Atonement finds no place 
in his thought. The virtuous will attain to eternal 
blessedness, and the vicious will perish in their vices. 
The free pardon of confessed sin — access to happiness 
through a Divine Mediation — in a word, the Doctrine 
of the Cross — seems, as far as his recorded utterances 
go, to have been quite alien from his system of religion. 
The appeal to personal experience of sinfulness, for- 
giveness, and acceptance, he would have dismissed as 
mere enthusiasm — and he declared in his sermon on 
the Character and Genius of the Christian Eeligion, 
that ^Hhe Gospel has no enthusiasm.''^ That it once 
was possible for a clergyman to utter these five words 
as containing an axiomatic truth, marks, perhaps as 
plainly as it is possible for language to mark it, the 
change effected in the religion of the Church of Eng- 
land by the successive action of the Evangelical Eevival 
and of the Oxford Movement. 

Sydney Smith's firm belief, from first to last, was 
that Eeligion was intended to make men good and 
happy in daily life. This was " the calm tenor of its 
language," and the " practical view " of its rule. And, 
as far as it goes, no one can quarrel with the doctrine 



220 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. 

SO laid down. After staying with some Puritanical 
friends, he wrote : — 

" I endeavour in vain to give them more cheerful ideas of 
religion : to teach them that God is not a jealous, childish, 
merciless tyrant ; that He is best served by a regular tenor 
of good actions, — not by bad singing, ill-composed prayers, 
and eternal apprehensions. But the luxury of false religion 
is, to be unhappy ! " 

It was probably this strong conviction that every- 
thing pertaining to religion ought to be bright and 
cheerful, that led him, as far back as the days when 
he was preaching in Edinburgh, to urge the need for 
more material beauty in public worship. — 

" No reflecting man can ever wish to adulterate manly piety 
(the parent of all that is good in the world) with mummery 
and parade. But we are strange, very strange creatures, and 
it is better perhaps not to place too much confidence in our 
reason alone. If anything, there is, perhaps, too little pomp 
and ceremony in our worship, instead of too much. We 
quarrelled with the Roman Catholic Church, in a great hurry 
and a great passion ; and, furious with spleen, clothed our- 
selves with sackcloth, because she was habited in brocade ; 
rushing, like children, from one extreme to another, and blind 
to all medium between complication and barrenness, formality 
and neglect. I am very glad to find we are calling in, more 
and more, the aid of music to our services. In London, 
where it can be commanded, good music has a prodigious 
effect in filling a church ; organs have been put up in various 
churches in the country, and, as I have been informed, with 
the best possible effect. Of what value, it may be asked, are 
auditors who come there from such motives ? But our first 
business seems to be, to bring them there from any motive 
which is not undignified and ridiculous, and then to keep 
them there from a good one : those who come for pleasure 
may remain for prayer." 



VII.] RELIGION 221 

When Sydney speaks of onr "quarrel with the 
Eoman Catholic Church," he speaks of a quarrel in 
which, at least as far as doctrine is concerned, he 
had his full share. Never was a stouter Protestant. 
Even in the passages in which he makes his strongest 
appeals for the civil rights of Eomanists, he goes out 
of the way to pour scorn on their religion. Some of 
his language is unquotable : here are some milder 
specimens : — 

" As for the enormous wax candles, and superstitious mum- 
meries, and painted jackets of the Catholic priests, I fear 
them not." 

" Spencer Perceval is in horror lest twelve or fourteen 
old women may be converted to holy water and Catholic 
nonsense." 

" I am as disgusted with the nonsense of the Roman 
Catholic religion as you can be ; and no man who talks such 
nonsense shall ever tithe the products of the earth." 

" Catholic nonsense " is not a happy phrase on the 
lips of a man who was officially bound to recite his 
belief in the Catholic Faith and to pray for the good 
estate of the Catholic Church. A priest who administers 
Baptism according to the use of the Church of England 
should not talk about "the sanctified contents of a 
pump," or describe people who cross themselves as 
" making right angles upon the breast and forehead." 
But time brings changes in religious, as well as in 
social, manners, and Peter Plymley prophesied nearly 
thirty years before Keble's sermon on " National Apos- 
tasy " had started the second revival of the English 
Church.i 

1 July 14, 1833. ** I have ever considered and kept the day 
as the start of the religious movement of 1833." — Cardinal 
Newman, Apologia. 



222 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. ] 



No one who has studied the character and career 
of Sydney Smith would expect him to be very 
sympathetic with the work which bore the name of 
Pusey. In 1841 he preached against it at St. Paul's. 

" I wish you had witnessed, the other day, my incredible 
boldness in attacking the Puseyites. I told them that they 
made the Christian religion a religion of postm-es and 
ceremonies, of circumflexions and genuflexions, of garments 
and vestures, of ostentation and parade ; that they took 
tithe of mint and cummin, and neglected the weightier 
matters of the law, — justice, mercy, and the duties of life: 
and so forth." 

From Combe Florey he wrote : — 

"Everybody here is turning Puseyite. Having worn out 
my black gown, I preach in my surplice; this is all the 
change I have made, or mean to make." 

In 1842 he wrote to a friend abroad : — 

" I have not yet discovered of what I am to die, but I 
rather believe I shall be burnt alive by the Puseyites. 
Nothing so remarkable in England as the progress of these 
foolish people.^ I have no conception what they mean, if 
it be not to revive every absurd ceremony, and every 
antiquated folly, which the common sense of mankind has 
set to sleep. You will find at your return a fanatical Church 
of England, but pray do not let it prevent your return. We 
can always gather together, in Green Street, a chosen few 
who have never bowed the knee to Rimmon." 

It may be questioned whether the Hermit of Green 
Street was very well qualified to settle the points at 

1 In early life he wrote from Edinburgh : — "In England, I 
maintain, (except among ladies in the middle rank of life) there 
is no religion at all. The Clergy of England have no more 
influence over the people at large than the Cheesemongers of 
England." 



VII.] RELIGION 223 

issue between the " Puseyites " and himself, or had 
bestowed very close attention on what is, after all, 
mainly a question of Documents. In earlier days, 
when it suited his purpose to argue for greater 
liberality towards Eoman Catholics, he had said: — 

" In their tenets, in their church-government, in the nature 
of their endowments, the Dissenters are infinitely more dis- 
tant from the Church of England than the Catholics are." 

In 1813 he had intervened in the controversy 
which raged round the cradle of that most pacific 
institution, the British and Foreign Bible Society, 
and had taken the unexpectedly clerical view that 
Churchmen were bound to '^ circulate the Scriptures 
with the Prayer Book, in preference to any other 
method." But he grounded a claim to promotion on 
the fact that he had " always avoided speculative, and 
preached practical, religion." He spoke of a ^theo- 
logical " bishop in the sense of dispraise, and linked 
the epithet with '^ bitter " and " bustling." Beyond 
question he had read the Bible, but he was not 
alarmingly familiar with the sacred text. It is 
reported^ that he once referred to the case of the 
man who puts his hand to the plough and looks 
back ^ as being '' somewhere in the Epistles." He 
forgot the names of Job's daughters, until reminded 
by a neighbouring Squire who had called his grey- 
hounds Jemima, Kezia, and Keren-Happuch. He at- 
tributed the Nunc Dimittis to an author vaguely but 
conveniently known as "The Psalmist," and by so 
doing drew down on himself the ridicule of Wilson 

1 By Mr. Stuart Reid. 2 st. Luke ix. 62. 



224 SYDNEY SMITH [chap. 

Croker.^ It may be questioned whether he ever read 
the Prayer Book except in Church. With the litera- 
ture of Christian antiquity he had not, so far as his 
writings show, the slightest acquaintance; and his 
knowledge of Anglican divines — Wake, and Cleaver, 
and Sherlock, and Horsley — has a suspicious air of 
having been hastily acquired for the express purpose 
of confuting Bishop Marsh. So we will not cite 
him as a witness in a case where the highest 
and deepest mysteries of Eevelation are involved, 
and where a minute acquaintance with Documents is 
an indispensable equipment. We prefer to take leave 
of him as a Christian preacher, seeking only the 
edification of his hearers. In a sermon on the Holy 
Communion, preached from the pulpit of St. Paul's, 
he delivers this striking testimony to a religious 
truth, which, if stated in a formal proposition, he 
would probably have disavowed: — 

" If you, who only partake of this Sacrament, cannot fail 
to be struck with its solemnity, we who not only receive it, 
but minister it to every description of human beings, in every 
season of peril and distress, must be intimately and deeply 
pervaded by that feehng. ... To know the power of this 
Sacrament, give it to him whose doom is sealed, who in a 

i**What can we think of the fitness of a man to address 
his Queen and his country in the dogmatical strain of this 
pamphlet, who does not know the New Testament from the 
Old; the Psalms from the Gospel, David from Simeon; who 
expatiates so pompously on the duty and benefit of Prayer, 
yet mistakes and miscalls a portion of the Common Prayer, which 
he is bound in law and in conscience to repeat every evening of his 
life." — Quarterly Review, July 1837. 

The reference is to the Sermon on the Queen's Accession. The 
blunder was rectified in a later edition. 



VII.] RELIGION 225 

few hours will be no more. The Bread and the Wine are 
his immense hope ! they seem to stand between him and 
infinite danger, to soothe pain, to calm perturbation, and to 
inspire immortal courage." 

What is the conclusion of the whole matter ? It is, 
in my judgment, that Sydney Smith was a patriot of 
the noblest and purest type ; a genuinely religious man 
according to his light and opportunity ; and the happy 
possessor of a rich and singular talent which he em- 
ployed through a long life in the willing service of the 
helpless, the persecuted, and the poor. To use his own 
fine phrase, the interests of humanity "got into his 
heart and circulated with his blood." ^ He wrote and 
spoke and acted in prompt and uncalculating obedience 
to an imperious conviction. — 

" If," he said, " you ask me who excites me, I answer you, 
it is that Judge Who stirs good thoughts in honest hearts — 
under Whose warrant I impeach the wrong, and by Whose 
help I hope to chastise it." 

Here was both the source and the consecration of 
that glorious mirth by which he still holds his place in 
the hearts and on the lips of men. His playful speech 
was the vehicle of a passionate purpose. From his 
earliest manhood, he was ready to sacrifice all that the 
sordid world thinks precious for Eeligious Equality and 
Eational Freedom. 

1 He said this of Lord Grey. 



APPENDIX A 

LIST OF SYDNEY SMITH'S ARTICLES IN THE 

EDINBURGH REVIEW 



Vol. 


Art. 


Page. 


Vol. 


Art. 


Page. 


Vol. 


Art. 


Page. 




2 


18 


12 


9 


151 


32 


6 


389 




3 


24 


13 


2 


25 


33 


3 


68 




9 


83 


13 


5 


77 


33 


5 


91 




12 


94 


13 


4 


333 


34 


5 


109 




16 


113 


14 


3 


40 


34 


2 


320 




18 


122 


14 


11 


145 


34 


8 


242 




20 


128 


14 


5 


353 


35 


5 


92 




6 


314 


14 


13 


490 


35 


7 


123 




10 


382 


15 


3 


40 


35 


2 


286 


2 


2 


30 


15 


3 


299 


36 


6 


110 


2 


4 


53 


16 


7 


158 


36 


3 


353 


2 


6 


86 


16 


3 


326 


37 


2 


325 


2 


14 


136 


16 


7 


399 


37 


7 


432 


2 


17 


172 


17 


4 


330 


38 


4 


85 


2 


22 


202 


17 


8 


393 


39 


2 


43 


2 


2 


287 


18 


3 


325 


39 


2 


299 


2 


4 


330 


21 


4 


93 


40 


2 


31 


2 


10 


398 


22 


4 


67 


40 


7 


427 


3 


12 


146 


23 


8 


189 


41 


7 


143 


3 


7 


334 


31 


2 


44 


42 


4 


367 


3 


9 


355 


31 


6 


132 


43 


2 


299 


9 


12 


177 


31 


2 


295 


43 


7 


395 


10 


4 


299 


32 


2 


28 


44 


2 


47 


10 


6 


329 


32 


3 


309 


45 


3 


74 


11 


5 


341 


32 


6 


111 


45 


7 


423 


12 


5 


82 















227 



228 



SYDNEY SMITH 



Of these articles, sixty-five were reprinted by the author 
and are to be found in his Works. Those which he did not 
reprint are the following : — 



Vol. 


Art. 


Vol. 


Art. 


Vol. 


Art. 


Vol. 


Art 


1 


3 


3 


12 


16 


7 


34 


5 


2 


4 


3 


7 


17 


4 


34 


8 


3 


1 


13 


5 

Vol. 

40 


32 

Art. 

2 


6 


37 


2 



APPENDIX B 



" We can inform Jonathan what are the inevitable conse- 
quences of being too fond of glory ; Taxes upon every article 
which enters into the mouth, or covers the back, or is placed 
under the foot — taxes upon every thing which it is pleasant 
to see, hear, feel, smell, or taste — taxes upon warmth, light, 
and locomotion — taxes on every thing on earth and the 
waters under the earth, on every thing that comes from abroad, 
or is grown at home — taxes on the raw material — taxes on 
every fresh value that is added to it by the industry of man 
— taxes on the sauce which pampers man's appetite, and 
the drug that restores him to health — on the ermine which 
decorates the judge, and the rope which hangs the criminal — 
on the poor man's salt, and the rich man's spice — on the brass 
nails of the coffin, and the ribands of the bride. At bed 
or board, couchant or levant, we must pay — the schoolboy 
whips his taxed top — the beardless youth manages his taxed 
horse, with a taxed bridle, on a taxed road : — and the dying 
Englishman, pouring his medicine, which has paid 7 per cent., 
into a spoon that has paid 15 per cent. — flings himself back 
upon his chintz bed, which has paid 22 per cent. — and expires 
in the arms of an apothecary who has paid a licence of a 
hundred pounds for the privilege of putting him to death. 



APPENDIX B 229 

His whole property is then immediately taxed from 2 to 10 
per cent. Besides the probate, large fees are demanded for 
burying him in the chancel ; his virtues are handed down to 
posterity on taxed marble ; and he is then gathered to his 
fathers — to be taxed no more." — Review of SeyherVs " Amer- 
ica " in the Collected Works. 



" What would our ancestors say to this, Sir ? How does 
this measure tally with their institutions ? How does it agree 
with their experience ? Are we to put the wisdom of yester- 
day in competition with the wisdom of centuries ? (^Hear ! 
hear /) Is beardless youth to show no respect for the deci- 
sions of mature age? {Loud cries of hear ! hear!) If this 
measure be right, would it have escaped the wisdom of those 
Saxon progenitors to whom we are indebted for so many of 
our best political institutions ? Would the Dane have passed 
it over? Would the Norman have rejected it? Would such 
a notable discovery have been reserved for these modern and 
degenerate times ? Besides, Sir, if the measure itself is good, 
I ask the Honourable Gentleman if this is the time for carry- 
ing it into execution — whether, in fact, a more unfortunate 
period could have been selected than that which he has chosen ? 
If this were an ordinary measure, I should not oppose it with 
so much vehemence ; but, Sir, it calls in question the wisdom 
of an irrevocable law — of a law passed at the memorable period 
of the Revolution. What right have we. Sir, to break down 
this firm column on which the great men of that age stamped 
a character of eternity? Are not all authorities against this 
measure — Pitt, Fox, Cicero, and the Attorney and Solicitor- 
General ? The proposition is new, Sir ; it is the first time it 
was ever heard in this House. I am not prepared. Sir — this 
House is not prepared, to receive it. The measure implies a 
distrust of his Majesty's Government ; their disapproval is 
sufficient to warrant opposition. Precaution only is requisite 
where danger is apprehended. Here the high character of 
the individuals in question is a sufficient guarantee against 
any ground of alarm. Give not, then, your sanction to this 



230 SYDNEY SMITH 

measure ; for, whatever be its character, if you do give your 
sanction to it, the same man by whom this is proposed, will 
propose to you others to which it will be impossible to give 
your consent. I care very little. Sir, for the ostensible 
measure ; but what is there behind ? What are the Honour- 
able Gentleman's future schemes? If we pass this bill, what 
fresh concessions may he not require ? What further degrada- 
tion is he planning for his country? Talk of evil and inconven- 
ience. Sir ! look to other countries — study other aggregations 
and societies of men, and then see whether the laws of this 
country demand a remedy or deserve a panegyric. W^as the 
Honourable Gentleman (let me ask him) always of this way 
of thinking ? Do I not remember when he was the advocate 
in this House of very opposite opinions? I not only quarrel 
with his present sentiments. Sir, but I declare very frankly I 
do not like the party with which he acts. If his own motives 
were as pure as possible, they cannot but suffer contamination 
from those with whom he is politically associated. This 
measure may be a boon to the constitution, but I will accept 
no favour to the constitution from such hands. {Loud cries of 
hear! hear!) I profess myself. Sir, an honest and upright 
member of the British Parliament, and I am not afraid to 
profess myself an enemy to all change, and all innovation. I 
am satisfied with things as they are ; and it will be my pride 
and pleasure to hand down this country to my children as I 
received it from those who preceded me. The Honourable 
Gentleman pretends to justify the severity with which he 
has attacked the Noble Lord who presides in the Court of 
Chancery. But I say such attacks are pregnant with mischief 
to Government itself. Oppose Ministers, you oppose Govern- 
ment; disgrace Ministers, you disgrace Government; bring 
Ministers into contempt, you bring Government into con- 
tempt; and anarchy and civil war are the consequences. Be- 
sides, Sir, the measure is unnecessary. Nobody complains of 
disorder in that shape in which it is the aim of your measure 
to propose a remedy to it. The business is one of the great- 
est importance; there is need of the greatest caution and 
circumspection. Do not let us be precipitate. Sir ; it is im- 
possible to foresee all consequences. Every thing should be 



APPENDIX C 231 

gradual ; the example of a neighbouring nation should fill us 
with alarm ! The honourable gentleman has taxed me with 
illiberality. Sir, I deny the charge. I hate innovation, but I 
love improvement. I am an enemy to the corruption of 
Government, but I defend its influence. I dread reform, but 
I dread it only when it is intemperate. I consider the liberty 
of the press as the great Palladium of the Constitution ; but, 
at the same time, I hold the licentiousness of the press in the 
greatest abhorrence. Nobody is more conscious than I am of 
the splendid abilities of the Honourable Mover, but I tell 
him at once, his scheme is too good to be practicable. It 
savours of Utopia. It looks well in theory, but it won't do 
in practice. It will not do, I repeat, Sir, in practice ; and so 
the advocates of the measure will find, if, unfortunately, it 
should find its way through Parliament. (Cheers.) The 
source of that corruption to which the Honourable Member 
alludes, is in the minds of the people ; so rank and extensive 
is that corruption, that no political reform can have any effect 
in removing it. Instead of reforming others — instead of 
reforming the State, the Constitution, and every thing that 
is most excellent, let each man reform himself ! let him look 
at home, he will find there enough to do, without looking 
abroad, and aiming at what is out of his power. (Loud 
Cheers.) And now. Sir, as it is frequently the custom in this 
House to end vtdth a quotation, and as the gentleman who 
preceded me in the debate has anticipated me in my favourite 
quotation of the ' Strong pull and long pull,' I shall end with 
the memorable words of the assembled barons — ^ Nolumus 
leges AnglicB mutari.'^' — Review of Bentham's "Book of 
Fallacies " in the Collected Works. 



APPENDIX C 

" It is of some importance at what period a man is born. 
A young man, alive at this period, hardly knows to what 
improvements of human life he has been introduced ; and I 
would bring before his notice the following eighteen changes 



232 SYDNEY SMITH 

which have taken place in England since I first began to 
breathe in it the breath of life — a period amounting now to 
nearly seventy-three years. 

" Gas was unknown : I groped about the streets of London 
in all but the utter darkness of a twinkling oil lamp, under 
the protection of watchmen in their grand climacteric, and 
exposed to every species of depredation and insult. 

" I have been nine hours in sailing from Dover to Calais 
before the invention of steam. It took me nine hours to go 
from Taunton to Bath, before the invention of railroads, and 
I now go in six hours from Taunton to London ! In going 
from Taunton to Bath, I suffered between 10,000 and 12,000 
severe contusions, before stone-breaking Macadam was born. 

" I paid £15 in a single year for repairs of carriage-springs 
on the pavement of London ; and I now glide without noise 
or fracture, on wooden pavements. 

" I can walk, by the assistance of the police, from one end 
of London to the other, without molestation ; or, if tired, get 
into a cheap and active cab, instead of those cottages on 
wheels, which the hackney coaches were at the beginning of 
my life. 

" I had no umbrella ! They were little used, and very dear. 
There were no waterproof hats, and my hat has often been 
reduced by rains into its primitive pulp. 

" I could not keep my smallclothes in their proper place, for 
braces were unknown. If I had the gout, there was no col- 
chicum. If I was bilious, there was no calomel. If I was 
attacked by ague, there was no quinine. There were filthy 
coffee-houses instead of elegant clubs. Game could not be 
bought. Quarrels about Uncommuted Tithes were endless. 
The corruptions of Parliament, before Reform, infamous. 
There were no banks to receive the savings of the poor. The 
Poor Laws were gradually sapping the vitals of the country; 
and, whatever miseries I suffered, I had no post to whisk my 
complaints for a single penny to the remotest corners of the 
empire ; and yet, in spite of all these privations, I lived on 
quietly, and am now ashamed that I was not more discon- 
tented, and utterly surprised that all these changes and 
inventions did not occur two centuries ago. 



APPENDIX E 233 

"I forgot to add that, as the basket of stage-coaches, in 
M'hich luggage was then carried, had no springs, your clothes 
were rubbed all to pieces ; and that even in the best society- 
one third of the gentlemen at least were always drunk." — 
^^ Modern Changes" in the Collected Works. 

APPENDIX D 

"The longer I live, the more I am convinced that the 
apothecary is of more importance than Seneca ; and that half 
the unhappiness in the world proceeds from little stoppages, 
from a duct choked up, from food pressing in the wrong place, 
from a vext duodenum, or an agitated pylorus. 

*' The deception, as practised upon human creatures, is 
curious and entertaining. My friend sups late ; he eats some 
strong soup, then a lobster, then some tart, and he dilutes these 
esculent varieties with wine. The next day I call upon him. 
He is going to sell his house in London, and to retire into the 
country. He is alarmed for his eldest daughter's health. 
His expenses are hourly increasing, and nothing but a timely 
retreat can save him from ruin. All this is the lobster ; and, 
when over-excited nature has had time to manage this testa- 
ceous encumbrance, the daughter recovers, the finances are in 
good order, and every rural idea effectually excluded from the 
mind. 

"In the same manner old friendships are destroyed by 
toasted cheese, and hard salted meat has led to suicide. Un- 
pleasant feelings of the body produce correspondent sensations 
in the mind, and a great scene of wretchedness is sketched 
out by a morsel of indigestible and misguided food. Of such 
infinite consequence to happiness is it to study the body ! " — 
Quoted by Lady Holland in her " Memoir of Sydney Smith." 



APPENDIX E 

" I am sorry that I did not, in the execution of my self- 
created office as a reviewer, take an opportunity in this, or 



234 SYDNEY SMITH 

some other military work, to descant a little upon the miseries 
of war; and I think this has been unaccountably neglected in 
a work abounding in useful essays, and ever on the watch to 
propagate good and wise principles. It is not that human 
beings can live without occasional wars, but they may live 
with fewer wars, and take more just views of the evils which 
war inflicts upon mankind. If three men were to have their 
legs and arms broken, and were to remain all night exposed 
to the inclemency of weather, the whole country would be in 
a state of the most dreadful agitation. Look at the wholesale 
death of a field of battle, ten acres covered with dead, and 
half dead, and dying; and the shrieks and agonies of many 
thousand human beings. There is more of misery inflicted 
upon mankind by one year of war, than by all the civil pecu- 
lations and oppressions of a century. Yet it is a state into 
which the mass of mankind rush with the greatest avidity, 
hailing official murderers, in scarlet, gold, and cocks' feathers, 
as the greatest and most glorious of human creatures. It is 
the business of every wise and good man to set himself against 
this passion for military glory, which really seems to be the 
most fruitful source of human misery. 

" What would be said of a party of gentlemen who were to 
sit very peaceably conversing for half an hour, and then were 
to fight for another half hour, then shake hands, and at the 
expiration of thirty minutes fight again ? Yet such has been 
the state of the world between 1714 and 1815, a period in 
which there was in England as many years of war as peace. 
Societies have been instituted for the preservation of peace, 
and for lessening the popular love of war. They deserve 
every encouragement. The highest praise is due to Louis 
Philippe for his elforts to keep Europe in peace." — Footnole 
to Review o/" Letters from a Maliratta Camp " in the Collected 
Works. 



INDEX 



A 



^660^, The (Scott), 208. 

Advocates, duties of, 102. 

Allen, John, 84, 206. 

Althorp, Lord, 173. 

America, Seybert's, Review of, 

227-228. 
American affairs, 190, 195, 199. 

War of Independence, 140. 

Anastasius (Hope), 209. 
Apologia (Newman), 76, 221 7i. 
Aristotle, 36. 
Auckland, Lord, 161. 
Austin, Mrs., 145 n., 153. 

B 

Bacon, 36. 

Ballot, the, 177. 

Banks, Sir Joseph, 187. 

Barrington, Bishop, 16. 

Beach, Hicks-, family, 14, 15, 17, 

18, 19, 22. 
Beaconsfield, Lord, 128, 161, 162 n. 
Beattie, 35. 
Bedford, Duke of, 18. 
Benefices, inequality of, 164, 168 

seq., 171. 
Bennet, Lady Mary, 85, 205. 
Berkeley, Bishop, 35. 
Bernard, Mr. Thomas, 30, 31, 39. 
Bethell, Bishop, 78. 
Bishops, powers of, 165 seq. 
Blomfield, Bishop, 79, 173, 175, 

176, 207. 



Book of Fallacies (Bentham), 

Beview of, 228-230. 
Bossuet, 49. 
Bowles, John, 26. 
Bride of Lammermoor, The 

(Scott), 209. 
Brougham, Lord, 18, 24, 25, 26, 

128. 
Brown, Thomas (metaphysician), 

18, 25, 34. 
Butler, George, Head-master of 

Harrow, 78. 
Burke, 198, 215. 
Byron, 3, 26 7i. 



C 



Camden, Lord, 63. 

Campbell, Lord, 161. 

Canning, 3, 48, 50, 60, 61, 62, 63, 

124, 125, 198. 
Carey, William (missionary), 

180, 181. 
Carlisle, Lord, 87. 

see Howard. 

Carr, Bishop, 145 n. 
Castlereagh, Lord, 55, 56, 63, 140. 
Cathedral property, 164, 168 seq., 

171 seq. 
Catholic Question, 42, 43, 45-76, 

106 seq. 

Church, Roman, 115. 

Catholicism, Roman, 221. 
Channing, 191 ?i. 



235 



236 



SYDNEY SMITH 



Charlemont, Lady, 161. 
Charles I., 119. 

II., 119. 

Church, Dean, 91. 

Church of England, 46, 77 seq., 

108, 121, 178. 
Church Reform, 163-176. 
Clarendon, Lord, 161. 
Classics, study of, 10. 
Clergy, English, 91, 106, 163, 221, 

222. 

non-residence of, 77 seq. 

Catholic, education of, 53. 

Coercion of Ireland, 69. 

Combe Florey, Somerset, 131, 132 

seq., 142. 
Commission, Ecclesiastical, 163 

seq. 
Constable (publisher), 26. 
Contempt of Wealth (Seneca), 

176. 
Copley, see Lyndhurst. 
Cornewall, Bishop, 145 n. 
Coronation Oath, 47, 165. 
Cottenham, Lord, 161. 
Courtenay, Bishop, 78. 
Cowper, 3. 

Croker, John Wilson, 168, 224. 
Cromwell, 117. 
Cromwell, Henry, 120 n. 



Davy, Sir Humphry, 87. 

Denman, Lord, 161. 

Devonshire, William Cavendish, 
7th Duke of, 196. 

Dickens, Charles, 209. 

Disabilities, Catholic, 65 seq., 113 
seq. 

Don Juan (Byron), 44 n. 

Dryden, 207. 

Dudley, Lord, see Ward. 

Duigenan, Patrick, 107. 

Dundas, Henry (Viscount Mel- 
ville), 7 71., 21, 24, 140. 

Dunstanville, Lady, 161. 

Durham, Lord, 88. 



Eastlake, Mr., 161. 

Ecclesiastical Commission, 163 
seq. 

Education, 155-156 ; public school, 
5, 6; value of Classical, 5 seq. 

Edinburgh, 28. 

University, 17 seq. 

Edinburgh Review, 24:seq., 86, 90, 
177, 183, 207, 208, 217, 219. 

Sydney Smith's con- 
tributions to, 26, 27, 40, 90, 91, 
92 seq., 126, 177, 184, 226, 227. 

Eldon, Lord, 25, 56, 140. 

Elementary Sketches of Moral 
Philosophy, 33 seq. 

Elizabeth, Queen, 47, 119. 

Ellenborough, Lord, 145 n. 

Emancipation, Catholic, 65, 106 
seq., 128, 136 ?i., 140. 

Endymion (Beaconsfield), 128 n. 

England at the beginning of the 
nineteenth century, 25. 

English Bards and Scotch Re- 
viewers (Byron), 26 n., 44 n. 

English Church in the Nine- 
teenth Century (Overton), 16 n. 

Enquirer (Godwin), 89. 

Epitaph on Pitt, Sydney Smith's, 
40, 41. 

Erskine, Lord, 41. 

Essex, Lord, 160 n. 

Evangelical clergy, 178, 183 ; Re- 
vival, 219. 

Evangelical Magazine, 179. 



Ferguson, 35. 

Fitzgerald, William Vesey, 128. 
Foston-le-Clay, 41, 78 seq. 
Fox, Miss, 87. 

(martyrologist), 119. 

General, 203, 204. 

France and Ireland, 57, 60, 61, 

62, 63. 
Fry, Mrs., 85. 



INDEX 



237 



Game Laws, 85. 

Gas, iutroduction of, 88, 231. 

George in., 40, 42, 68, 71. 

IV., 124,125, 135. 

Gladstone, 49, 163, 190 n. ; Glean- 
ings, 163 71. 

Glenelg, Lord, 161. 

Goderich, Lord, 125. 

Godwin, William, 89. 

Gower, Leveson-, Lady, 87 n. 

Granhij (Lister) , 209. 

Grattau, Henry, 29, 56, 184. 

Gren villa, Lord, 40, 41, 55, 75. 

Greville, Charles, 135, 153. 

Grev, Lord, 44, 88, 112, 136, 141, 
143, 145, 147, 149, 151, 196, 197, 
225. 

Lady, 112. 

Grote, 177, 211. 

" Gunpowder Treason," Sermon 
on, 128, 154. 



Habit, Lecture on, 38. 
Halford, Sir Henry, 83. 
Hallam, 163. 
Harcourt, Vernon-, Archbishop, 

79n.,88, 107. 

William, 107. 

Miss Georgiana, 190, 191. 

Harrowby, Lord, 107. 

Hawkesbury, Lord, 59, 60, 201 n. 

Haydon (painter), 204. 

Heart of Midlothian (Scott) , 208. 

Heuley, Lord, 41 n. 

Henry viii., 119. 

Hermann, 175. 

Hibbert, Nathaniel, 23, 125, 161. 

Hill, John, 17. 

History of Roman Jurisprudence 

(Terrasson), 90. 
Hobbes, 216 n. 
Hoche, General, 49. 



Holland, Lady (Sydney Smith's 
daughter), 5, 22, 192, 214. See 
Smith, Saba. 

Sir Henry, 23, 161, 192. 

Miss Caroline, 193. 

Holland, Lady (Elizabeth Yas- 
sall), 30, 36, 40, 41, 79, 80, 87, 
161, 167 ?i., 203, 213. 

Lord, 29, 40, 41, 75, 87, 128, 

206, 212. 

Scott, Canon, 205. 

Holy Living and Dying (Jeremy 
Taylor), 130. 

Hope, Mr., 161. 

Hope, Thomas, 209. 

Horner, Francis, 18, 25, 29, 32. 

Houghton, Lord, 32, 144 n., 194 71., 
198 n. ; Life of (Sir Wemyss 
Reid) , 195 n. 

Howard, William (Earl of Car- 
lisle), 110. 

Mrs. Henry, 83 n. 

Ho wick, Lord, 56. 

Howley, Archbishop, 3. 

Hume, 34 ?i., 35. 



Improvements, Modern, 230-232. 
Ingram, Meynell-, H. C, 196. 
Invasion of England, 55. 
Ireland, Roman Catholics of, 48. 
Irish Question, see Catholic. 
Ivanhoe (Scott) , 208. 



James i., 119. 

Jeffrey {Edinburgh Revieio), 18, 

24 seq., 31, 32, 36, 80, 87, 181, 

195, 199, 217. 
Judges, duties of, 97 seq. 

Sermon to, 96 seq. 

"Junius," 198. 
Juries, Irish, 66, 67. 



238 



SYDNEY SMITH 



Keble, 151 n., 221. 
Keogh, Mr., 57. 



Labouchere, Henry, 161. 
Landseer, 161. 
Langdale, Lord, 161. 
Lansdowne, Lord, 18. 
Lauderdale, Earl of, 44, 87, 88. 
Laws, the Penal, 117, 120. 
Lawyers, Sermon to, 101. 
Lays of Ancient Rome (Macau- 
lay), 209. 
Lectures on Moral Philosophy, 

31, 33seg., 216 n. 
Lee, Professor, 169. 
Lemon, Sir Charles, 161. 
Letter to the Electors upon the 
Catholic Question, 112. 

Letters to Archdeacon Singleton, 
163 seg., 167 se^., 195. 

JjCtters from a Mahratta Camp, 
Review of, 233. 

Letters (Pascal), 76. 

Liberty of Prophesying (Jeremy 
Taylor), 130 n. 

Lister, Thomas Henry, 209. 

Liverpool, Lord, 124. 

Livings, Poor, 164, 168 seq., 171. 

Locke, 207. 

Londonderry, Marquis of, 63 n. 

Longman (publisher), 26. 

Lords, House of, speech on, 148. 

Louis XIV., 123. 

Luttrell, Henry, 29, 87, 132, 161. 

Lyndhurst, Lord, 124, 125. 



M 



122, 



Macaulay, 76, 84 ?i., 86 w., 

123, 141, 193, 195, 209. 
Mackintosh, Sir James, 29, 87, 

184, 185, 207. 
Maltby, Bishop, 207. 
Marcet, Alexander, 29, 87. 
Marcet, Mrs., 87, 210. 



Markham, Archbishop, 41. 

Marsh, Bishop, 91 seq., 2Qil. 

Martyrology, English, 119. 

Mary, Queen, 47. 

Massinger, 207. 

Melbourne, Lord, 144 n., 161, 173, 

178 71. 
Methodism, 178, 179-183. 
Methodist Magazine, 178. 
Meynell, see Ingram. 
Mildert, Van, Bishop, 77. 
Milman, Dean, 152. 
Milner, Isaac, 92. 
Milton, 207. 
Mind, Lectures on, 32. 
Missions, Indian, 179, 180. 
Missionary Society, Baptist, 180. 
Modern Painters (Ruskin), 210. 

Monk, Bishop, of Gloucester, 
173, 174, 207. 

Montaigne, 208. 

Monteagle, Lord, 161. 

Montgomery, " Satan," 195. 

Monuments, National, 153, 205. 

Moore, Thomas, 206. 

More, Hannah, 16, 183. 

Morley, Lady, 151. 

Morpeth, Lord, 88. 

Murray, Lord, 24, 25, 76, 217. 

Musical Festivals, 206. 



N 

Napoleon, 43, 47, 50, 51, 57, 61, 

62, 64, 202. 
Netheravon, 14 seq. 
Newman, Cardinal, 221 n. 
Newton, Bishop, 77. 
Nicholas Nicklehy (Dickens), 

209. 
Noodle's Oration, 188, 228. 
Norfolk, Duke of, 113. 



O 



O'Connell, 106, 128. 
Orangemen, 65. 



INDEX 



239 



Oswald, 35. 

Oxford, 9, 13. 

Oxford Movement, 151 n., 219. 



Paley, 217, 218. 

Palmerston, 3. 

Paradise Lost, parody of, 159. 

Paris, 122, 162. 

" Partington, Mrs.," Speech, 148. 

Pascal, 76. 

Peace, blessings of, 156-157, 191, 

202. 
Peel, 3, 32, 125, 161. 
Pelham, Bishop, 78. 
Perceval, Spencer, 48, 50, 51, 52, 

53, 54, 57, 59, 61, 62, 63, 65, 70, 

72, 73, 78, 124, 140, 198, 201 n., 

221. 

Charles George, 73 n. 

Persecuting Bishops, 83 n., 91, 

195, 207. 
Persecution, Religious, 117 seq., 

200. 
Peter Plymley's Letters, 43, 44, 

45-76, 195, 197. 
Petre, Catholic family, 117. 
Peveril of the Peak (Scott), 209. 
Philips, Sir George, 34 7i., 88, 89. 
Phillips, J. S. R., 110. 
Philosophy, Moral, Lectures on, 

31, 33 seq., 216 n. 
Pirate, The (Scott), 208. 
Pitt, 7 n., 22, 40, 41, 50, 51, 75, 

106. 
Plato, 35. 

Playfair, John, 17, 25. 
Pluralities, Church, 77 seq. 
" Pocket Boroughs," 137 seq. 
Poetical Medicine Chest, The, 83. 
Pope, 207. 

Praeterita (Ruskiu), 210. 
Preaching, 19 seq. 
Prebends, confiscation of, 164, 

168 seq. 
Provincial Letters (Pascal), 76. 
Puseyites, 222-223, 



Pybus, John, 22. 

Q 

Quarterly Revieio, 139, 224 n. 

R 

Raikes, Robert, 15. 

Railways, Mismanagement of, 

189, 190. 
Records of the Creation (Bishop 

of Chester), 90. 
Redesdale, Lord, 56. 
Reform Bill, 136 seq., 147-149, 199. 
Reform, Speech on, 139 seq., 142- 

144. 
Reid, Mr. Stuart, 16, 83, 86, 111, 

198, 209 n. 

(philosopher) , 34. 

Religion in England, 222 n. 
Retaliation, Policy of, 62, 72. 
Revolution of 1688, 53, 54, 117. 

French, 135, 201. 

Riots, Bristol, 202. 

Rogers, Samuel, 29, 87, 160. 

Romilly, Sir Samuel, 29. 

Rose, Mr., 63. 

Rousseau, 80. 

Ruskin, 210. 

Russell, Lord John, 42, 123, 138, 

140, 167, 172; Life of (Wal- 

pole), 62 n. 

S 
Sadler, Michael Thomas, 139. 
Salaries, Bishops', 172. 
Scarlett, James (Lord Abinger), 

29. 
Schools, Public, 3, 5 seq., 10, 

131 n. 
Scotch, The, 28, 54. 
Scott, 18, 208, 209. 
Selwyn, George Augustus, 189. 
Seneca, 176. 
Sermons, extracts from, 20, 21, 

96, 97-105, 220, 224-225. 
Sevigne, Madame de, 208. 
Seymour, Lord, 19. 
Shakespeare, 207. 



240 



SYDNEY SMITH 



Sharp, "Conversation," 29. 

Shell, 106. 

Sidmouth, Lord, 64. 

Simeon, Charles, 91. 

Singleton, Archdeacon, 163, 167 
seq. 

Slave Trade, 199. 

Smith, Sydney — ancestry, 1 ; 
birth, 2; school-days, 2; life 
at "Winchester, 3 seq.', goes 
to Normandy to perfect his 
French, 9; enters New College, 
Oxford, 9; Fellow, 9; strait- 
ened circumstances, 9; choice 
of a profession, 12; ordained 
Deacon, 13; Priest, 14 n. ; Cu- 
rate of Netheravon, 13; tutor 
to Hicks-Beach family, 17 ; goes 
to Edinburgh, 17 ; sermons at 
Charlotte Chapel, 18 seq. ; pub- 
lishes volume of sermons, 19, 
21 ; marriage, 22 ; children, 23 ; 
founds the Edinburgh Beview, 
24 ; leaves Edinburgh for Lon- 
don, 27; forms various friend- 
ships, 29 ; lectures at the Royal 
Institution, 31; Elementary 
Sketches of Moral Philosophy , 
33; various duties in London, 
39 ; increasing prominence, 39 ; 
preferred to the living of 
Foston-le-Clay, 41 ; Peter 
Plymley's Letters, 43; life at 
Foston-le-Clay, 79 seq.; visits 
his friends in Edinburgh, 88; 
scheme of study at Foston, 89; 
Persecutvig Bishops, 91; at- 
tack on Bishop Marsh, 91; 
efforts on behalf of Catholic 
Emancipation, 106 seq. ; Rector 
of Londesborough, 110; Letter 
to the Electors on the Catholic 
Question, 112; improved finan- 
cial condition, 112; visit to 
Paris, 122; promoted to pre- 
bendal stall at Bristol Cathe- 
dral, 125 ; severs his connection 



with the Edinburgh Review, 
125 ; preaches sermon on " Gun- 
powder Treason," 129; death 
of his eldest son, 130; moves 
to Combe Florey, Somerset, 
131 ; Speech to the Freeholders 
on Reform, 138 ; Canon of St. 
Paul's, 145 ; presented at Court, 
146 ; leads a less strenuous life, 
149 ; official relations with St. 
Paul's, 152 ; life in London, 159 ; 
marriage of his eldest daughter, 
161; goes to Paris again, 162; 
summit of his social fame, 163 ; 
Letters to Archdeacon Single- 
ton, 163, 167 ; inherits a fortune 
from his brother, 176 ; publishes 
reprint of articles in J5^c?in6w?-5'/i 
Revieio, 177 ; decreasing health, 
189 ; last illness and death, 192 ; 
as father, 131, 161; preacher, 
19, 86, 96-105, 110, 123, 129, 130, 
134, 153 seq. ; politician, 21, 22, 
29, 40, 42, 84, 136 seq., 147 seq., 
167, 199; lecturer, 31 seq. ; let- 
ter-writer, 80, 123, 124, 126, 
189, 190; pastor, 79 seq., 110, 
135 n., 141; student, 89, 207; 
motives in writing, 27 ; philo- 
sophical attainments, 33 seq. ; 
versatility, 33, 81, 195 ; methods 
of writing, 84, 90, 133 ; a rapid 
reader and reviewer, 90 ; style, 
194; humour, 195-198; occa- 
sional coarseness, 197; con- 
troversial methods, 197-199; 
judgment of various authors, 
207 seq. ; affectionate and sym- 
pathetic nature, 21, 85, 131, 133, 
184, 211, 212, 216; honesty and 
outspokenness, 21, 124, 129; 
financial affairs, 27, 33, 41, 121, 
125, 145; friends, 29, 84,87,88, 
151, 161; tolerant nature, 40, 
41, 42, 43, 45 seq., 106 seq., 130, 
136; fancy for dabbling in 
medicine, 12, 18, 82, 83, 123, 



INDEX 



241 



133, 134, 210, 232; persoual 
appearance, 122, 154, 193 ; chief 
p easures, 133 ; general good 
qualities, 152, 153; not a lover 
of the country, 159-lGO; love 
of fun, 185-189, 191; manner 
in society, 194; a friend of 
Freedom, 199; lover of Peace, 
202-204; his aesthetic sense, 
204 seq.; attitude towards 
Music, 205-206; theories of 
life, 210-216; temperance, 212 
seq. ; religious views, 216 seq. ; 
some shortcomings, 219-224; 
summary of his character, 225. 

Smith, Sydneij, Memoirs of (Lsidj 
Holland), 232. 

Robert (father) , 2. 

James (uncle) , 2. 

Mrs., nee Olier (mother), 2, 

12, 212. 

Robert (brother), 2, 29. 

Cecil (brother) , 2. 

Courtenay (brother), 2, 9, 

176. 

Marie (sister), 2. 

Mrs., nee Pybus (wife), 22, 

30, 33, 80, 86, 87, 131, 134, 135. 

Saba (daughter), 23, 81, 150, 

161, 214. 

Douglas (son), 23, 37, 81, 83, 

130, 131. 

Emily (daughter) , 23, 37, 81, 

125, 150. 

Wyndham (son), 23, 81. 

Adam, 34, 89. 

Smollett, 198. 

Somerset, Duke of, 18. 

Somerville, Lord, 56. 

Spencer, Hon. and Rev. George, 
91. 

Stanley, Bishop, 78. 

Stephen, Sir Leslie, 217. 

Stewart, Dugald, 17, 18, 25, 34, 36. 

Stourton, Lord, 117. 

Stowell, Lord, 42. 

Stratheden, Lady, 161. 

R 



Styles, Rev. John, 182, 183. 
Sumner, Archbishop, 19 n., 169. 
Sunday-schools, 15, 16 n., 17. 
Swift, 75, 76, 198. 



Tait, Archbishop, 179, 180. 
Tale of a Tub (Swift), 195. 
Talfourd, Thomas Noon, 173. 
Tankerville, Lord, 87, 88. 
Taste, Lectures on, 31. 
Taxes, 227. 
Temperance, 212-214. 
Terrasson, 90. 
Thomson, 25, 207. 
Thurloe, Lord, 120 n. 
Ticknor, George, 27, 153, 193. 
Tithes, Irish, 70. 
Toleration, Religious, 63, 64, 72, 

157. 

Sermons on, 41, 42, 128, 154. 

TravelsinSouthAmerica(Watev- 

tou), 38, 185 56^. 
Troy, Cardinal, 57. 



Union of Great Britain and Ire- 
land, 54, 57. 
Universities, the, 10, 11, 12, 152. 
Utilitarianism, 210-211. 



Valpy, Richard, 78. 
Vernon, Miss, 87. 
Victoria, Queen, Sermon on Ac- 
cession of, 154, 155, 224 n. 
Villages, life in, 14 seq. 
Voltaire, 80, 113. 

W 



Wall, Mr. Baring, 161. 
Walpole, Horace, 207. 



242 



SYDNEY SMITH 



Wa]pole, Sir Spencer, 145 n. 

War, horrors of, 156, 157, 191, 
1^02-204, 233. 

Ward, John William (Lord Dud- 
ley), 29. 

Waterton, C, 38, 185 n. 

Watson, Bishop, 77. 

Waverley (Scott), 208. 

Wellington, Duke of, 125, 136, 143, 
149. 

West, Benjamin, 204. 

Wetherell, Sir Charles, 139. 

Whewell, Dr., 32. 



Wilberforce, Bishop, 189. 
Wilkie, Sir David, 39. 
William IV., 135, 138, 141, 

143, 155, 202 n. 
Wilton, Rev. Richard, 110. 
Winchester College, 2, 3, 5. 
Wordsworth, 208. 
Wrangham, Francis, 107. 



142, 



Yorkshire Gazette, 109 n. 
Herald, 109 n. 



110. 



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